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In June this
year YANQ and the Australian Services
Union (ASU) announced
that we were embarking on a joint campaign to lift the pay and
conditions of youth workers. Below is a brief update on how the
campaign is progressing.
Why we started the campaign
As we said at the time of the announcement,
delivering quality youth services for young people
is impossible without quality, professional youth workers.
Unfortunately one of the most pressing challenges facing youth
services in Queensland is retaining and attracting good staff and as
a result young people are missing out. One of the main reasons for
this is that the pay and conditions of workers in the non-government
sector have failed to grow at a suitable rate to entice and keep
staff.
The aim of the campaign is to improve youth
services by reducing the high levels of staff turnover. The main
strategy to achieve this is to negotiate a Multi-Employer Agreement
(MEA) that will, at the very least, create the legal mechanism
through which improved pay and conditions can be achieved over the
next few years. We are confident that additional funding from
governments will result in improved pay and conditions and will
entice more people to seek employment in and then stay in the sector.
Alongside the MEA strategy, the ASU and QCOSS are
also working on a new Award to replace the existing Social and
Community Services award. There are advantages to developing both an
MEA (for all human service sectors) and a new
Award. YANQ is working to ensure that both strategies are
complementary of each other and are likely to lead to good outcomes
both for young people (e.g. no reduction in service opening hours)
and youth workers (fair increases in pay and conditions).
What needs to be done to ensure success
If we are to have any chance of success, we will
need:
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To increase the numbers of non-government
youth workers that are members of their union. Presently only 7-8%
of staff in non-government human services are members of the Union.
We aim to lift this (within the youth sector) to 50%.
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A number of Youth services that are commited
to negotiating a Multi-Employer Agreement.
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The agreement of funding bodies to fund the
improvements that are negotiated into the MEA.
Union membership
We need to increase the levels of Union Membership
for two reasons. First to send a clear signal to employers and
funding bodies that youth workers support this campaign. The second
is to ensure that the ASU has the resources it needs to continue this
campaign.
Join
the Union Now and show your support!
In the first 3 months of the campaign the ASU
welcomed 94 new members! These new members have all been offered
12 months free membership/subscription of YANQ as a small token
of thanks1.
94 new union members is an excellent start
but this represents just a small overall increase. In the New Year
we will continue encouraging staff of non-government youth services
to join the ASU.
To read more on the importance of joining the union visit
http://www.yanq.org.au/content/view/653/71/
Youth services commitment to the MEA
A Multi-Employer Agreement is an agreement between
a number of services and their employees (represented by their
Union). Presently 15 youth services have indicated that they will
participate in negotations.
The ASU and YANQ are very encouraged by this and
we are expecting that more services will come on board in 2008.
Government support
YANQ and the ASU have started meetings with
Government Departments about the campaign. In December we met with
representatives of the Minister for Communities and are waiting on a
response to a number of questions which we raised.
We will provide updates on the support of the
Department of Communities and other funding bodies via the campaign
page at www.yanq.org.au/mea.
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