Senior Catering Officers at the Office of Sport will not be forced to transfer to a private employer.

In October 2025 management had decided to outsource the catering and maintenance functions at sites across NSW.

The decision to privatise these roles has resulted in 60 jobs being completely deleted from the Office of Sport’s establishment. All affected staff were subject to the State Government’s Workforce Mobility Placement Policy.

In late October, the PSA lodged a dispute in the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) regarding issues with the Office of Sport’s implementation of its Change Management Plan.

For business continuity, the Office engaged a private catering service at some of their sites, while government employees were still working in their roles. Moreover, the private catering operator, Eurest, invited affected government employees to apply for roles within their company. 

It was suggested that the role of Chef within the Eurest company was a comparable role to that of Senior Catering Officer within the Office of Sport structure. This suggestion meant “employees are not entitled to severance or redundancy payments if their government job ends because the service is transferred to a non-government body, and they were offered comparable employment or failed to apply for it”.

The PSA and members certainly did not agree with this.

The PSA was successful in challenging the decision of a comparable role from the Senior Catering Officer to Chef.

“This is a fantastic outcome, in an otherwise horrible situation for our members at the Office of Sport,” said General Secretary Stewart Little.