You might know that we’ve been bargaining with Parkside for your new enterprise agreement, recently. But unfortunately, their latest tactics during negotiations have taken a dark turn.
Parkside have now provided us with their draft agreement, and in it they’re attempting to reclassify disability support workers as home carers – with a pay cut of at least $8 an hour, or as high as 33% of your hourly rate.
After looking at their draft we’re worried that if Parkside get their way, they’ll either force you to cop their slashes to pay or employ new workers at their bargain bin home care rates and toss their old workforce for cheaper labour.
Either way, whatever they’re planning is underhanded and plain wrong.
They’ve also proposed a new ‘multiple employment contract’ model – which is just a fancy way to say they’ll preference workers who sign contracts on the cheaper home care rate.
What it really means is that Parkside are creating a race to the bottom, and workers and participants are the ones who will suffer from their cuts.
What’s even worse is that we didn’t find out about their scheme in person at a bargaining meeting, we found out after the fact in their draft agreement sent via email. It’s almost like they know it’s dodgy, and don’t want any questions asked.
Parkside’s rep deliberately lied to us when she said that you don’t need a percentage wage increase each year because you’re on a higher rate as disability support workers, all whilst planning to cut you back to the home care rate.
So not only are they planning to reclassify you and pay you less – they won’t even give you percentage wage increase in your agreement either. Talk about kicking their workers while they’re down.
We need you to get involved and have your say.
Parkside’s threats are serious, and we need to make sure they don’t get their cuts through. Make sure you speak to your managers and ask for explanations, speak to each other, and most importantly demand that you continue to be employed as disability support workers.
The more of you that get on board, the more they have to listen – so if you know a colleague that’s not yet a member encourage them to join us in our fight.
We’ve called for an urgent meeting with Parkside, but we need workers to speak up too. Most importantly, if Parkside try to put their dodgy agreement out for a vote be prepared to VOTE NO and encourage everyone you know to VOTE NO too.