United Services Union organiser Mark Hughes said the abandonment of the contract for recycling services was "disappointingly handled".

Mr Hughes' union has petitioned prospective councillors in the local region to sign up to a pledge to move away from contracting out as a budget-saving measure.

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"We've seen it across the whole country, the excessive use of labour hire, predominantly, as well as contractors creeping in to replace permanent workforces," he said.

"I think COVID has very much highlighted what can happen with insecure work when things go wrong."

Contracting is a natural and legitimate business practice, which allows local governments and other organisations to provide specialist services to fulfill a one-off requirement.

But Mr Hughes said there had been an increasing trend of contracting out everyday council tasks to private businesses, moving employment out of town.

Contractors cost more money per hour, so the practice probably does not even save money in the long term, he said.

He didn't specifically identify any local council as being worse than any other, but said the union's plan was to get ahead of the problem while it's still small, by locking in councillors to the commitment.

"There is a couple of areas of concern locally where we've seen specific incidences of contractors being used, where councils had both the expertise and the equipment that they should have been doing it themselves," he said.

"What we don't want to see is machinery owned by council being parked up in a yard with contractors being used and replacing permanent workforce. We don't want to see job numbers decreased and contractors increased.

"Rather than waiting until it's too late, we want to start highlighting it and getting commitment from incoming councillors that they want to look after the community in that regard."

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He said Tamworth councillors should have considered bringing the Challenge contract in-house.

Tamworth Regional Council was contacted for this story and declined an offer to comment.

The United Services Union represents council workers across the region.

Tamworth council and disability support service Challenge, which council employed to provide recycling services, ran into trouble earlier in 2021, before amicably parting ways in July.

TRC water and waste director Bruce Logan said at the time that "we believe pursuing other options at this time is the most financially responsible option".

The two organisations agreed to work together to find the staff work elsewhere.

The dispute started after council split its waste contract into kerbside pick-up and recycling processing.

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