Dunedin civil defence manager Neil Brown has been ruled the primary person on-call for civil defence warnings in the city, despite his contention he was not contractually bound to be personally available at all times.
His argument ended up at the Employment Relations Authority last month, but authority member Philip Cheyne's ruling, in a judgement released yesterday, came down in favour of the council.
Despite that, Mr Brown said yesterday he was happy to have the matter resolved after "years of doubt".
Mr Cheyne said there was "much more history of negotiations between Mr Brown and the council about his salary that provides a wider context for this dispute arising", although he said it was not necessary to canvass that in order to resolve the dispute.
Asked about that history yesterday, Mr Brown said it related to the on-call aspect of his job.
He had been working in the civil defence role since 1980, the judgement said, and the conditions of his individual contract stated he might frequently have to work longer than his 8.30am to 5pm hours, for which no additional remuneration or compensation was payable.
There were 330 civil defence warnings or alerts in the past financial year, and the number outside working hours was "not insignificant".
While one of his key tasks was to "maintain systems and procedures to continuously enable the receipt of warnings", the wording in the job description did not stipulate the systems and procedures, so there was some ambiguity whether he was personally obliged to be on call.
Mr Cheyne said an argument for Mr Brown was he was obliged to manage the systems and procedures, but not obliged to personally perform the on-call duty: "I do not accept that clause . . . can be read in this way."
Provision of a vehicle was given some coverage in the judgement, with Mr Brown opting last year to take a vehicle allowance in money, rather than use of a vehicle.
Mr Cheyne ruled Mr Brown could use the vehicle when he was on call, but not otherwise.
Human resources manager Bruce Miller said the matter was one between the council and an employee and it would be wrong to comment.
Mr Brown said there was never any question of not being available, he intended to stay in his job, and had no further issues with his contract.
Costs were reserved.
