If you live in Canberra, you live on some of the cleanest streets in the country, drive on the best maintained roads and rely on high quality public services delivered from safe, warm, functional public buildings and infrastructure.
You may not realise it, but there are hundreds of hard-working public servants that made this happen. The ACT government calls them General Service Officers, Cleaning Services Officers, and Building Services Officers.
The workers who clean public toilets and buildings.
The workers who maintain our streets, roads and parks.
The workers who have kept going throughout the pandemic, putting themselves in danger every day.
Our lowest-paid workers, who with Canberra housing and energy prices soaring are struggling to put food on the table.
The workers who Covid-19 has shown are being left behind.
In 2022, the ACT government is once again bargaining with its workforce; and this time we’re asking that it recognise their contributions
This current EBA is all about equality – we’re not just asking for more money in the pocket, we’re demanding a better deal for the lowest-paid government workers who need it the most.
Our GSOs, CSOs and BSOs need their union more than ever, and we’ll be fighting for them all the way.
EBA
22
WE WANT
WHAT
WE WANT
WHAT
FAIRER PAY
The GSO classification and pay structure isn’t keeping up with the cost of living in Canberra, where the median house price is approaching $1 million and energy prices are rising by 12 percent.
A 3.5 percent wage increase simply isn’t enough – we’re proposing a restructure of the classification so the lowest-paid GSO workers will be paid at least $61,000, not the unfair and inadequate $47,500 they receive now.
As well as properly rewarding entry-level GSOs, we’re pushing for increases across the board – for team leaders and operational staff, for leading hands and 2ICs, and for senior supervisors who might have 50 people under their charge.
These are front-line workers who have provided society’s first defence against the pandemic. They deserve better.
REAL ALLOWANCES
Workers cleaning public toilets currently receive an insanitary conditions allowance of $2.71 a day. That’s basically nothing, and falls well short of what the private sector pays.
Height allowances for parks and gardens workers, swinging in the trees metres above the ground with a chainsaw, don’t compare with similar workers in the private sector.
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GREATER JOB SECURITY
The shift away from government workers to contractors is damaging our workforce, never more than in the building trades where we’re seeing less direct employment and more contractors with little job security and poorer pay.
The ACT Property Group, for example, not long ago had well over 100 trade staff but now boasts less than 30. Canberra Hospital has halved its maintenance staff over the past decade.
It has to stop. Secure employment is the answer.
