Sally Rugg vs Monique Ryan

[nobbyiscool]

Ok champ. Tell us your informed take on it.

I already did.

Apparently your inability to bother reading affidavits extends to an inability to read the posts you're arguing with?

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

I already did.

Apparently your inability to bother reading affidavits extends to an inability to read the posts you're arguing with?

I missed what you said. What post number is it?

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

Sally Rugg, the former chief of staff for Kooyong MP Monique Ryan, accepted a $30,205 Parliamentary Staff Allowance for overtime worked, which was offered due to the reasonable expectation of overtime during sitting weeks.

According to Dr Ryan’s job description, the role required flexibility and versatility, with 12-hour days during parliamentary sitting weeks. However, Dr Ryan also clarified that employees who often opt out of additional hours of work due to personal or family commitments have the option to reject the allowance.

Ms Rugg’s cover letter played a significant role in securing the position, as she demonstrated her understanding of the job’s importance and expressed her enthusiasm for contributing to urgent and lasting reform. The job description required managing the paid and volunteer staff, developing and executing a media strategy, drafting speeches, and providing expert advice on parliamentary, legislative, policy, political, and constituency issues.

Dr Ryan acknowledged that the workload was significant, given the budget for staffers had been reduced. While Ms Rugg had four electorate officers and approximately 2,000 volunteers to help ease the workload, Dr Ryan claimed that Ms Rugg did not work efficiently and delegated tasks ineffectively. Dr Ryan also noted that Ms Rugg was issued a formal warning after flying home from Canberra while knowingly infected with Covid.

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

The court will decide whether she was fired - the Commonwealth and Ryan are claiming that she resigned.

It was also closer to 6 weeks.

So yeah... you don't even know the basics of the case champ.

What's wrong with firing a worker who is no good at her job?

 

[nobbyiscool]

What's wrong with firing a worker who is no good at her job?

They have an EBA that spells out how it's to be done. You know, workplace rights that we've spent decades working for.

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

They have an EBA that spells out how it's to be done. You know, workplace rights that we've spent decades working for.

The job description was pretty clear and she took $35,000 in overtime pay.
It is reasonable to have a chief of staff that you are comfortable with especially if you are an independant who is targeted by Murdoch and the Coalition constantly.
I don't think Rugg should be the poster girl for workplace rights.

 

[Nuggs Bunny]

The job description was pretty clear and she took $35,000 in overtime pay.
It is reasonable to have a chief of staff that you are comfortable with especially if you are an independant who is targeted by Murdoch and the Coalition constantly.
I don't think Rugg should be the poster girl for workplace rights.

I don't think it's for you to say who should and shouldn't have workplace rights. Rugg is fully entitled to go to court to have her grievance heard, this hit piece you're running on her doesn't change that.

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

I don't think it's for you to say who should and shouldn't have workplace rights. Rugg is fully entitled to go to court to have her grievance heard, this hit piece you're running on her doesn't change that.

Of course she's entitled to workplace rights , she's also bound to fulfill her job remit.
Maybe she took a neurosurgeon's directness too personally. Neurosurgeons are direct and demand attention to detail by the nature of their job. You can't make mistakes in brain surgery
Hopefully Ryan can find someone happy to work for her.

 

[Crankyhawk]

Of course she's entitled to workplace rights , she's also bound to fulfill her job remit.
Maybe she took a neurosurgeon's directness too personally. Neurosurgeons are direct and demand attention to detail by the nature of their job. You can't make mistakes in brain surgery
Hopefully Ryan can find someone happy to work for her.

Just a minor fact check Ryan is not a neurosurgeon she is a neurologist (ie does not perform surgical procedures beyond possibly a lumbar puncture)

 

[nobbyiscool]

Of course she's entitled to workplace rights , she's also bound to fulfill her job remit.
Maybe she took a neurosurgeon's directness too personally. Neurosurgeons are direct and demand attention to detail by the nature of their job. You can't make mistakes in brain surgery
Hopefully Ryan can find someone happy to work for her.

That’s the thing though - we don’t want people who are happy to work 70 hours. That culture is no good for anyone, and having people under that stress isn’t good for our democracy cos people can’t deliver their best work. Ryan admitted that herself, saying it was a matter of time til there’s a poor outcome. Kate Jenkins wrote a whole report about it.

You clearly don’t like Rugg, but as an activist she’s a perfectly fine poster child for testing “reasonable overtime” in the context of the Jenkins report.

I mentioned the EBA - it’s also worth noting that the warning for getting on a plane won’t hold up, it’s unlikely to be considered actionable, especially when she says that was her medical advice. (Although, despite the timing, I hate that she didn’t just drive the 7 hours, it’s a pretty easy drive.)

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

Just a minor fact check Ryan is not a neurosurgeon she is a neurologist (ie does not perform surgical procedures beyond possibly a lumbar puncture)

My mistake but she is a highly accomplished neurologist.

'Prior to becoming a Member of Parliament, Ryan was the Director of the Neurology at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. Ryan has over 150 peer-reviewed publications and has been a principal investigator on a number of clinical trials.[5]'

 

[Gralin]

Alternatively as Ryan was generally a public hospital specialist maybe she is used to insane hours and (because surrounded by junior docs with similarly imbalanced work ethics) think this is normal work behaviour. I mean I work 28 hours a week clinically and about the same non clinical admin (but am only paid for 10 hours admin) but if I don’t do it then I fall behind on the things I need to do.

yeah which is why I think someone else making sure the expectations are not unreasonable would have been useful here

 

[Gralin]

The job description was pretty clear and she took $35,000 in overtime pay.
It is reasonable to have a chief of staff that you are comfortable with especially if you are an independant who is targeted by Murdoch and the Coalition constantly.
I don't think Rugg should be the poster girl for workplace rights.

out of interest how many hours total do you think that 35k which is actually 30k should be worth?

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

out of interest how many hours total do you think that 35k which is actually 30k should be worth?

Not sure what the hourly rate is so I don't know.
There should be more staff allocated though.

 

[nobbyiscool]

My mistake but she is a highly accomplished neurologist.

'Prior to becoming a Member of Parliament, Ryan was the Director of the Neurology at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. Ryan has over 150 peer-reviewed publications and has been a principal investigator on a number of clinical trials.[5]'

Is that role administrative, managerial, scientific/educational, or medical? (ie. you're the boss that does the hard stuff)

I genuinely don't know - does anyone else?

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

Is that role administrative, managerial, scientific/educational, or medical? (ie. you're the boss that does the hard stuff)

I genuinely don't know - does anyone else?

Mainly research based and medical I imagine.
Like I've said earlier ,if either major party had any semblence of decent climate policy, we wouldn't need highly trained medical specialists running for parliament.
Also Rugg is a professional activist so I don't think she fitted the role. I think that's the mistake Ryan made .

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

Ryan is a self-described centrist.[28] She campaigned on a platform of action on climate change, political integrity, and gender equality.

Ryan was previously a member of the Australian Labor Party between 2007 and 2010.[29]
Gralin , she's not a tory.

 

[nobbyiscool]

Mainly research based and medical I imagine.
Like I've said earlier ,if either major party had any semblence of decent climate policy, we wouldn't need highly trained medical specialists running for parliament.
Also Rugg is a professional activist so I don't think she fitted the role. I think that's the mistake Ryan made .

And that's a valid argument regardless of what the affidavits say. The thing about activists - and I've been one for a lot of my life on a couple of different issues - is that we enjoy power, or shifting power, without having to accept a lot of the responsibility of that power. It's why we become activists rather than politicians, and I strongly suspect that's the case with Rugg because she absolutely had the profile after the Marriage Equality campaign to go into a plum Greens spot if she wanted it, but instead seemed to move further away from politics until the role with Ryan.

 

[Gralin]

Not sure what the hourly rate is so I don't know.
There should be more staff allocated though.

well I gave some examples earlier based on the base salary of $136k

Which were 8 hours if you have no loading for OT and 5.5 hours if you have 50% loading for OT per week

so 416 hours with no loading 286 hours with

Parliament sits a total of 18-20 weeks a year

If they are doing 70 hours a week on sitting weeks then sitting weeks alone add 600 hours over OT

and then there are the commitments when in Melbourne

It's clear that the 30k for overtime doesn't even come close to fair compensation in this scenario.

I used to have a job where we did regular OT, paid for with penalty rates. Now we did a lot of OT, nights and weekends included.

I'm talking 60 hour weeks were normal, meaning over the course of a year I worked an extra 6 months worth of hours.

I more than doubled my base salary by the time OT was added on.

The government is offering a 20% loading regardless of how many hours are worked. Great value for them, not so great for the people in the role, hence why Rugg is in court

 

[Not Important]

Rugg bid to return to Monique Ryan’s office dismissed​

By Paul Sakkal​

Social activist Sally Rugg has failed in her legal fight to return to the office of Kooyong MP Monique Ryan.
Rugg was Ryan’s chief-of-staff and was fighting in Federal Court to have her departure from the office overturned. She claimed she was pushed from the role by Ryan.
But Justice Debra Mortimer dismissed the application in a brief hearing on Tuesday.
Rugg will now stop being paid by the Commonwealth as she prepares for a broader trial on whether she was asked to work unreasonable work hours.

 

[Gralin]

I feel like regardless of how strong her claim is they know the end result of her winning is going to be a class action against the government

and she's going to be shit out of luck

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

$500,000 in lawyers fees for that outcome.

 

[nobbyiscool]

$500,000 in lawyers fees for that outcome.

It's far from over.

Returning to the legal stoush between Sally Rugg and teal MP Monique Ryan, Federal Court Justice Debra Mortimer has released the reasons why she dismissed the activist’s application to have her departure from Ryan’s office overturned.

The judge wrote Rugg’s arguments about the contraventions of the Fair Work Act “may well succeed”.

“If that is the case, then on the evidence as it will be at trial, she will be able to apply for an order for reinstatement. The circumstances may well be quite different then, and the Court would be proceeding on the basis that she has been wholly or largely successful in her allegation,” Justice Mortimer wrote in a decision published this morning.

She wrote if Rugg returned to work for the federal MP, the situation would not be “tolerable”.

“Even on the most favourable view of Ms Rugg’s submissions about how responsibly they might each try to behave, I do not consider the situation is likely to be tolerable, let alone productive and workable, for either of them. The applicant’s submissions to the contrary had a significant degree of unreality about them,” the justice wrote.

The scenario would depend on Rugg setting her own boundaries about what work she would do and how much was reasonable, and Ryan would “modify her expectations accordingly” to fit with the activist’s perspective, she wrote.

Justice Mortimer has specifically not made judgements on the facts of the case, only on the interlocutory action that would've allowed Rugg to return to work, because it's clearly untenable.

From here the Commonwealth will try and settle... so I guess the test is the extent of Rugg's activism on behalf of other staff and the findings of the Jenkins report.

 

[Big Papa Ted]

Having read this thread, its terrifying to know that some people would throw their mum in a bonfire if they thought it supported the 'big picture'

 

[Aristotle Pickett]

Having read this thread, its terrifying to know that some people would throw their mum in a bonfire if they thought it supported the 'big picture'

Sally Rugg is not my mother and climate change is a bonfire.