Disability and Home Care

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The Rank & File team recognises that our members in Disability and Home Care services have been under extraordinary pressure since the NSW Coalition government's privatisation of Ageing, Disability and Home Care (ADHC) a number of years ago.

 

As predicted at the time, we have seen staff leave the sector and inferior redundancy packages offered. The corporate knowledge and skills that have been lost are incalculable. We have seen some private service providers (NGOs) attempt to force those staff that remain, on to vastly inferior wages and conditions, often doing the same work but with a new job title. The treatment of Disability and Home Care members represents not only an industrial issue for those directly affected but remains a dangerous precedent for the whole public sector.

 

Achievements

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In 2017, the incoming Rank & File team’s first act was to seek immediate and meaningful consultation with the NSW Coalition Government, and failing that, at considerable legal risk and financial penalty, they kept faith with the membership by organising and holding the Valentine’s Day 24 hour strike. 

 

The PSA then sought to gather policies and agreements negotiated previously with FACS into the Community Living Award to protect members as they transferred to their new private sector employer. FACS (the government) declined to cooperate, so the PSA took them to court and won! Rostering Principles are just one example that now sits safely within the Award giving much more strength for members.

 

The PSA organised submissions to the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the Implementation of NDIS including Privatisation of Disability Services. The PSA CPSU NSW had the opportunity to once again expose the risks and pitfalls of a failed market system that promised more services but delivered less.

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The CPSU NSW was instrumental in grandparenting transferred staff rates of pay, rather than transferred staff receiving pay cuts down to the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award (SCHADS Award). 

 

We also ensured that the PSA legal team were advocating for CPSU NSW members in the first stage of the recent Fair Work Commission hearing on the Peak Employer Groups attempts to vary the SCHADS Award and reduce the already paltry conditions and remuneration afforded to members during sleepovers. 

 

Simply to remain an active force within disabilities under the current conditions, represents a huge achievement. The Liberal-National Government's whole purpose in privatisation was to avoid direct accountability and deregulate the sector, its wages and conditions, its industrial base, its union.

 

We no longer have one employer to contend with but fifteen, and to be in the best position to advocate, we have set up a delegate presentative structure to reflect that reality. We’re not going anywhere!

 

The Rank & File team commits to:

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• Continue to resource the Peak Disability Services Delegates' Council to enable both specifically targeted industrial advocacy for all NGO’s separately and for a united CPSU NSW approach for the sector.

• Resource and support delegates and members throughout the Enterprise Bargaining process to gain the best possible outcomes for existing members. 

• Using all forms of media to continue the fight and campaign to recognise the importance of CPSU NSW members' industrial rights when considering quality and continuity of disability care and viability of the NDIS.

• Continue the CPSU NSW's application to increase the sleepover allowance in the SCHADS Award.

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