Private aged care cutting corners

Lauren Stevenson, Health Services Union member

A recent Lateline report revealed the horrors faced by many older people in Australia’s aged care facilities: bed sores, residents left in their own excrement, malnutrition and abuse. Jacinta Collins, the Minister for Ageing, has dismissed the reported cases as aberrations. I’ve worked in both public and private nursing homes and I’ve seen worse.

What Lateline left out of the story was the trend towards privatisation in the aged care sector. In Victoria, the government just announced the sell-off of a further 1,000 beds. In pursuit of a higher profit margin, privately-owned nursing homes cut corners. They pay staff less than the public sector and operate with fewer staff per resident. This means less time spent on basic care needs like showers, repositioning bedridden residents and feeding slow-eating residents, inevitably leaving residents neglected.

Staff are forced to operate at a pace that is unsafe, literally backbreaking, leaving them overwhelmed – which in turn can lead to elder abuse. Care staff are not undertrained as many suggest, they just don’t have time to do the job properly.

We need a fightback against the push towards privatisation. Staff need to organise through their unions, with the support of residents and their families. In addition, a pay rise for staff and setting ratios would go a long way towards protecting both the quality of aged care and working conditions in the sector.

 

Brisbane warehouse workers preparing to close wage gap

Mark Barclay, NUW delegate, Woolworths Brisbane Liquor Distribution Centre

National Union of Workers members at the Woolworths Brisbane Liquor Distribution Centre (BLDC) are getting organised as our first enterprise agreement nears expiry.

BLDC workers are currently employed on a greenfield (new) agreement that was negotiated by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA). This agreement is due to expire on 1 August.

The agreement allows Woolworths to pay BLDC workers anywhere between 5 and 15 percent less than comrades at its Regional Distribution Centre at Larapinta. An even larger pay gap exists when wages are compared with workers in distribution centres in Sydney and Melbourne

The majority of BLDC workers are not experienced in struggle and unionism. Almost two years ago, around 20 to 30 workers decided to meet with the NUW off site, in our own time, to devise a plan to unionise and improve our wages and conditions.

Since then many workers have decided to join our union. They have been convinced that union density and activity are the best way to fight for fairer wages and conditions. With the help of the union, delegates and activists, workers at the BLDC have ramped up this year’s campaign.

We have increased our membership to a strong majority in the warehouse. Getting to this point has been an important learning experience, with NUW delegate training and conferences being invaluable.

Given that we are coming off the wafer thin greenfield agreement negotiated by the SDA, there have been many ideas for what to include in our log of claims. The main demands are for: a two-year agreement with annual increases of 13 percent and 7 percent to address wage disparity; industry standard shift loading for every hour of the shift (currently paid only for hours worked after 6pm and before 5am); union rights; rights for casual workers including conversion to permanency and site rates of pay; and a fair performance clause (rather than the current unrealistic performance parameters).

As NUW delegate at Woolworths Hume Distribution Centre in Melbourne, Marcus Harrington, touched on in the last issue of Red Flag, the company has launched an aggressive campaign against penalty rates and shift loading, and is proposing to cut the training rate from $22.55 an hour to an extremely low $18 an hour.

In our case, it is proposing to roll over the current agreement with all existing conditions and offering a paltry 2 percent annual wage increase.

Woolworths’ use of contract labour to undercut conditions is also a real concern. During the Christmas period last year, it emerged that Woolworths had engaged labour hire staff and was paying them $5 an hour less than directly employed staff.

We also learned that these workers were forced to pay for their own medical records, and some told us they were refused copies of their employment conditions.

The company has for now backed away from putting on labour hire staff, but there is concern about this practice being used to undermine conditions.

All this after Woolworths announced a half year profit of $1.1 billion. Not to mention the massive disparity in the wages of workers performing the same work in other Woolworths distribution centres.

It is now up to the workers at the BLDC to decide if they’re prepared to stand in solidarity with their brothers and sisters, join our union, fight for some decent advances in our pay and conditions and close the unfair gap in pay. Unity is strength.

 

Bus drivers reject pay offer

Jess Payne, member of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union

Campbell Newman and the LNP (Liberal National Party) state politicians have given themselves a 41 percent pay increase. Brisbane bus drivers are being offered 2 percent.

For the last few months the RTBU (Rail, Tram and Bus Union) has been in EBA negotiations with the LNP-run Brisbane City Council. Negotiations broke down when Council presented its final wage offer and pushed for the removal of important conditions, such as income protection.

In early July members were balloted to authorise industrial action, including strikes and a ban on collecting fares. The ballots came back overwhelmingly in favour of action.

The sentiment at the depots is that the LNP will stop at nothing to give workers a worse deal. This is the first time drivers have voted for industrial action in over 10 years.

The first action was to be a four-hour stop work and general meeting on 19 July. This was deferred by the union after the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission ordered the Council back to the negotiations.

In its place there was a rally of around 150 bus drivers in the city, where a motion was passed to endorse future industrial action if necessary.

It is a positive step that Brisbane bus drivers are ready for a fight with the LNP and the City Council. The strength of the union – with about 99 percent density – and the industrial power of public transport workers means that if strikes and stoppages were to happen we could dictate the terms of our EBA. This would also be a significant development in the fightback against the LNP.

 

Australia Post doesn’t deliver for workers

Rob, member of the Communication Workers Union

Australia Post workers across the country voted on a proposed enterprise agreement after Australia Post terminated negotiations in early June.

The results declared on 5 July were that the agreement was approved by the national workforce. However, of Australia Post’s 33,000 workers, fewer than two-thirds returned their ballots.

The national office of the union that covers most postal workers, the Communication Workers Union (a division of the Communication, Electrical and Plumbers Union), believed that the agreement wasn’t good enough.

As an example of Australia Post’s approach, it had proposed a clause that gave it the option of freezing final annual salary amounts, a move that would affect the superannuation entitlements of workers upon retirement.

The plan was swiftly denounced by union members and was dropped without members having to take industrial action. This was surely a sign that a serious fight would have been worth it and might have won us more.

The revised agreement put to members was loudly endorsed by management and softer sections of the union, particularly the NSW and Queensland branches.

Part of the smoke and mirrors used by Australia Post to sell the deal was the claim that the new agreement would deliver a 10.5 percent pay rise.

This is a lie: part of this so-called 10.5 percent was already provided in the previous agreement. Much of the remaining or real part of the wage offer will not be paid until December in 2014 and 2015.

Even then the increases may hang on the achievement of “performance targets” that are not in the control of many workers. A “sweetener” one-off bonus of $500 did not fool anyone who understood that this was before tax, paid only to full-time workers and not rolled into salary.

Some believe that Australia Post was keen to close the deal and avoid any disruption in the lead-up to a federal election. This would have been an opportune time for union members to flex some industrial muscle.

The leadership of the CWU in Victoria was strongly opposed to the agreement put to the vote by Australia Post. Some management stooges in retail and delivery areas were quick to remove any union material espousing a “no” vote. Despite this, Victoria had the biggest turnout of voters and recorded a 48 percent “no” vote.

The NSW branch leadership was happier with the management offer. It called for a “yes” vote and recorded a “no” vote of only 9.7 percent. Nationally, the agreement was approved with a 75.2 percent overall “yes” vote.

In 2012 Australia Post CEO Ahmed Fahour was paid $2.78 million. In the same year Australia Post workers’ wages lagged behind inflation. For many of these workers, this agreement means that the chance of catching up has been lost for now.

 

Community workers strike a blow

Lana Woolf, ASU delegate at Doutta Galla Community Health

Australian Services Union members at Mind Australia walked off the job for 24 hours at midnight on 10 July. Mind is one of Australia’s largest non-government mental health organisations, with dozens of sites across Victoria. The strike was the biggest in the social and community sector for over a decade.

At midday, workers from around Melbourne met at its head office in Heidelberg to protest the appalling lack of good faith of management in bargaining for a new enterprise agreement. So far, the union and management have been at the negotiating table for a year and a half, with union members first imposing work bans in February this year. The protest was swelled by supporters and members of other unions who turned up in solidarity (Australian Education Union, Health Services Union and United Firefighters Union).

Workers across the community sector are at the tail end of the ASU’s equal pay campaign. This campaign has had successes, including the notable “equal pay” legal victory in 2012. As part of this win, government and employers were forced to acknowledge that workers in the sector were among the worst paid in the country. Since then, the campaign has continued as workplace after workplace has had to fight on the ground to demand that their organisations pass on the wage increases mandated by the equal pay decision. Mind Australia workers have been leading the way in the fight to ensure that this important legal win is reflected in real gains for workers.

Striking workers talked about the irony of a company that is supposedly dedicated to supporting people with mental health issues ignoring the health of its own workers. They reported that management has threatened workers with the sack, understaffed programs and habitually used “performance management” as a threat.

And while Mind management says it can’t afford to pay adequately and fairly the people who actually do the work, it has been creating new executive positions. 

Mind wants to discard existing entitlements like penalty rates for late shifts and rostered days off from the new agreement in the name of remaining competitive. Addressing the rally, ASU delegate Adam said, “Management says, ‘Just in case someone else cuts these things, we’ll cut them first.’ What’s the next thing that we should give up in order to be competitive? Sick leave? Time in lieu? We’re saying no.”

Other community workers are watching this dispute closely. We hope they continue to fight until Mind management gets the message.

 

NSW public servants under attack

Kate Doherty, member of PSA Central Council (elected on the Progressive PSA ticket)

The NSW government is on the warpath, and public servants are in the line of fire. You could be forgiven for having missed it, because the mainstream media have uttered barely a peep while more than 15,000 public servants are being sacked. Liberal Premier Barry O’Farrell has now ramped up the attack with the passage of the Government Sector Employment Act. The new law was quietly passed through the NSW parliament on 20 June and is likely to come into effect within months.

This legislation is draconian, offering absolute “flexibility” to the state government and none to employees. Grounds for termination are substantially expanded, and merit selection and appeal provisions are entirely removed. The change will facilitate a culture of nepotism in the public service.

 Rather than having a secure “position”, public servants will now have a “role”, meaning they can potentially be moved to different locations or job types. The empty promise to “consult” shouldn’t make us feel better about the insecurity this will cause. Also under attack are long service leave conditions and limitations on labour hire contracting.

Since his election in March 2011, O’Farrell has faced little organised resistance to his agenda. Unfortunately, an impressive rally of 40,000 workers (led by the teachers) in September 2011 was a one-off and not the start of a fighting campaign. To their credit, in June 2012 striking firefighters hosed down Parliament House, successfully resisting cuts to their workers compensation that other unions quietly accepted. But this was an exception.

The Public Service Association executive has been timid and focused on negotiating with O’Farrell rather than fighting him. In the last two years the PSA has failed to respond despite huge job cuts, directed primarily at the PSA membership, and a 2.5 percent wage cap.

 The PSA is a large union with 42,000 members composed of public servants, school assistants and general staff in universities and TAFE. Our potential power is significant, but we have not seen any serious attempt to mobilise this. In October 2012 a (long overdue) half-day stop-work meeting was called, ostensibly in response to the government’s attacks, but in fact as a last ditch attempt to secure votes for Labor-aligned factions in the union election.

Members’ frustration opened the space for the Progressive PSA, an independent ticket of rank and file unionists, to have a major victory in that election. The Labor faction retained control of six of seven executive positions. However, the Progressive PSA now controls the Central Council, officially the highest decision- making body in the union.

O’Farrell has repeatedly ignored the PSA’s polite negotiation attempts. The Progressive PSA members are not uniform in political approach, but there is an urgent need for the Central Council to use its position to lead a fightback, to encourage the rebuilding of delegate networks and to call for coordinated actions with other unions.

The Liberal Party has a clear intention to smash the public service, privatise everything it can and drive down employment conditions. For this reason, a single strike or rally will not be enough to stop O’Farrell. But we have to start somewhere, and serious action can stop his momentum.

Last month PSA members at the State Library of NSW went on strike in response to the announcement of job cuts and casualisation. The action was driven by ordinary union members and involved a lively picket at the first strike at the library in decades. This kind of activity can show we won’t simply be walked over.

On 8 July the Central Council of the PSA voted unanimously for a public-sector-wide half-day stop work on 22 October. We intend to put O’Farrell on notice that his slashing of the public service must stop.

Public service unionists around the state need to be convincing their workmates to join the union, getting involved in the campaign and preparing to strike.

Public servants in NSW make this state run. Our futures depend on standing up to O’Farrell.

 

Students should back striking staff at Sydney University

Ridah Hassan

Students and staff are natural allies on university campuses. This has recently been demonstrated at Sydney University, where students have joined staff on union picket lines. On 6 and 7 August, Sydney University staff will, for a fifth time, be out on strike. Students again need to attend the pickets in numbers to show our solidarity with staff in their industrial dispute.

The same people attacking staff wages and conditions are cutting our courses, cramming our tutorials full and lining up with the government’s neoliberal agenda for universities. Students should support the staff strikes because the academic and general staff make the university what it is.

They deserve our backing against a greedy management. Take a look at the campus on any strike day: lecture theatres and tutorial rooms are empty, phones and emails go unanswered, and libraries are closed. Without the staff, the university is a bunch of gaudy buildings and a mass of confused young people.

The NTEU has made some important gains, but the fight goes on. Join the picket lines on 6 and 7 August, from 7am at all university entrances.