In October this year members and other staff within the Office of Sport were informed the Office had made the decision to outsource the catering and maintenance functions at sites across NSW.

The decision to privatise these roles has resulted in 60 jobs being affected; completely deleted from the Office of Sport’s establishment. All affected staff will 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.  

If 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 that under clause 25A of the Government Sector Employment Regulation 2014, “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.

On 26 November 2025, the PSA was before the IRC with regards to the above dispute. The Industrial Relations Secretary, on behalf the Office of Sport, agreed with the PSA that Senior Catering Officer role and the Eurest Chef role are not “comparable employment” for the purposes of cl 25A of the Government Sector Employment Regulation 2014.

For our members in the role of Senior Catering Officer this means:

• If a Senior Catering Officer does not apply for the Chef role offered by Eurest then the employee is still eligible for a voluntary redundancy subject to the mobility process.
• If a Senior Catering Officer is offered the Chef role by Eurest and does not accept it, then the employee is still eligible for a voluntary redundancy subject to the mobility process.
• If a Senior Catering Officer is offered the Chef role by Eurest and accepts that role, then their current award conditions will carry across with them to Eurest.

In short, the PSA was successful in challenging the decision of a comparable role from the Senior Catering Officer to Chef. A fantastic outcome, in an otherwise horrible situation for our members at the Office of Sport.