Disability and Homecare

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The Rank and File recognize that our members in Disability and Homecare Services have been under extraordinary pressure over the forced conscription and privatization of ADHC. Just as predicted at the time, we have seen staff leave the sector and inferior redundancies often forced on many of those left. The corporate knowledge that is being lost is uncalculatable. We have seen some NGO’s attempt to force those staff that remain, on to vastly inferior wages and conditions, often doing the same work but with a new title. The treatment of Disability and Homecare members represents not only an industrial issue for those directly affected but remains a dangerous precedent for the whole public sector.

 

Achievements

The incoming Rank & File team’s first act was to seek immediate and meaningful consultation with 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 24hr strike, marching through pouring rain.

 

The leadership then sought to gather policies etc negotiated previously with FACS into the Community Living Award that would go over to any new employer. For reasons best known to themselves FACS declined to cooperate, so the leadership 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 leadership organised submissions to the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the Implementation of NDIS including Privatisation of Disability Services. The PSA CPSU had the opportunity to once again expose the risks and pitfalls of a failed market system that promised more services but delivered less.

 

Homecare members had been struggling to negotiate with their new employer and avoid being played off against a much bigger group of coworkers’ and have been asking unsuccessfully for two separate agreements. The CPSU took AU to court and won a separate scope order which represents a huge win for AU staff that will now allow them to negotiate a separate agreement and may yet act as a positive precedent for all Disability members across the NGO landscape in the lead up to enterprise bargaining.

 

Simply to remain an active force within disabilities under the current conditions, represents a huge achievement. The Governments whole purpose in privatization 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 and File team commit to:

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• Continue to resource the two-tiered Delegate Council to enable both specifically targeted industrial advocacy for all NGO’s separately and for a united CPSU approach for the sector.

• Resource and support delegates and members throughout the Enterprise Bargaining process to gain the best possible outcomes for existing members and other staff. Grand fathering transferred staff will be a minimum demand and bringing new staff up to our expectations, rather than forcing transferred staff down to the SCHADS award and associated agreements.

• Using all forms of media to continue the fight and campaign throughout the Royal Commission into Disabilities and any available political cycle, of the importance of members industrial rights when considering quality and continuity of disability care and viability of NDIS.

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