United Voice News
New UTS Child Care deal 'the best one'
Child care workers across UTS Child Care’s three centres have won a new collective deal that gives them better working conditions and more work/life balance.
The LHMU negotiating team brokered the deal which also includes pay rises of 5%, 4% and 4% a year over three years.
LHMU member Lee Dellabarca who works at the Kids Campus centre in Lindfield says she will be voting ‘yes’ for the deal. ‘We’re very happy with the deal … I reckon this EBA is the best one we’ve had because we had a lot of input this time,’ she says. ‘Everyone is happy with it. We put our view forward and it has been met. I think everyone here [at Kids Campus] is going to say "yes".’
Programming time increased
An important win for UTS Child Care workers was the provision of more programming time – that is, time to develop teaching programs based on the children’s needs. The award does not include this and ABC Learning was the only other child care centre group where workers had one hour of programming time a week.
But UTS Child Care’s deal has improved on that, providing one and a half hours of programming time a week for each group of five children. For example, four and half hours of programming time will be allocated to child care workers with programming responsibilities for a class of 15 children. This will be worked into the centre’s rosters.
While accepting it was a good win, Lee points out ‘no matter how much time we get for programming, it is never enough’.
Paid maternity leave win
Lee is happier about the paid maternity leave win. Workers won an increase in paid maternity leave from the current six weeks to nine. ‘We’re happy with that. It’s taken us a long time to get it’, Lee says, because UTS Child Care had put off discussing the issue in previous negotiation rounds. ‘It’s good it’s sorted out because a few [workers] are having children now.’
Lee says she tells fellow workers to join the union ‘in case something goes wrong in the workplace, at least you have people who can back you up’. And during the EBA negotiations, she was keen to make sure others turned up to meetings. ‘It’s important so they feel confident and see what the union is doing,’ Lee says.
Voting on the deal closes next week.
