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SYDNEY: Anglicans lay down law
by Jill Rowbotham and Annabelle McDonald
THE AUSTRALIAN
October 12, 2005
SUNDAY school teachers and other Anglican lay leaders could be sacked for habitual drunkenness and promiscuity and other offences under new disciplinary rules being considered by the Sydney synod.
The conservative Sydney Anglican Diocese is the first of Australia's 23 synods to consider widening the definition of wrongful conduct to lay leaders as well as clergy.
It will also create a professional standards committee to make it easier for victims of sexual misconduct and abuse to lodge a complaint against both clergy and lay leaders. The diocese's professional standards rector Philip Gerber said this meant all lay leaders - including sunday school teachers, youth leaders and all other parish leaders - could be sacked if they breached the standards.
The standards would now include habitual drunkenness, serious financial impropriety, unchastity, or conviction of a criminal offence carrying a sentence of 12 months or more, Mr Gerber said.
The discipline ordinance agreed to last night concides with Archbishop Peter Jensen's anxiety over the the Howard Government workplace reforms.
An Anglican enterprise agreement though, shows the church is not shy of rejigging work arrangements. Anglican Retirement Villages signed a generous enterprise agreement with its nurses earlier this year, allowing the employer to ask them to work irregular hours to make up 76 hours in a fortnight in return for other benefits in the contract.
The agreement provides for nurses to receive 7 per cent above the award base rate, and offers a series of salary sacrifice options, including childcare of up to $3750 a year. The deal bundles together penalties, such as weekend rates and casual loadings, for employees who work on Sundays.
According to one of the signatory unions, the NSW Nurses Association, the agreement was a fair one that bettered the state award on which it was based.
On Monday, Dr Jensen said he was concerned families were losing their weekends together.
Other churches said yesterday they were generally opposed to individual contracts for their workers, but some circumstances required enterprise agreements.
"Uniting Church employers are expected to support collective bargaining and awards ahead of individual workplace agreements and they are called to resist any attempts to erode protections through deregulation or other means," the church's president, Dean Drayton, said yesterday.
Additional reporting: AAP
