United Voice News
QLD Child Care workers to stop work at Griffith University
Students and staff at Griffith University on Brisbane's south side will have to make alternative child care arrangements after child care workers announced a series of planned stop-work meetings in February and March.
Workers at the University’s Nathan Campus Child Care Centres and Out of Hours School Care Program have announced the strikes after becoming increasingly frustrated about the inequity between their pay rates and that of other University workers performing comparable roles.
LHMU Branch Secretary Gary Bullock said the University had offered other general staff a 4 percent per year pay increase for the next three years, while refusing to offer child care staff any wage increase.
“The wages of child care workers at the University are already significantly lower than other workers performing comparable roles and stand to fall even further behind,” Gary said.
“For example, a child care employee with a Certificate III – which they all have as a minimum at Griffith –receives up to 21 percent less pay than other employees with the same level of qualification.”
The discrepancy between pay rates for workers is possible because Griffith pays its child care workers rates based on child care award rates, which are far lower than the rates offered to the rest of workers under the University’s own Enterprise Agreement (EA).
“Griffith’s treatment of its child care workers is appalling, particularly given the House of Representatives Inquiry into Pay Equity Report tabled in November last year - which clearly states that offering different rates of pay for people with comparable skills is direct discrimination,” Gary said.
The first stop work meeting will be between 7:30-9:30am on Thursday 25 February.
Further stop work meetings will occur in the lead up to International Women’s Day (8 March), when workers may take a 12-hour stop-work meeting if the dispute is unresolved.
Their times and dates are yet to be confirmed.
“We apologise if any parents are inconvenienced by the action, but the work of child care professionals is too important to be so easily dismissed by University management,” Gary said.
