By Paul Oboohov
SYDNEY — A mass meeting of cleaners from the NSW Cleaning Service (a state government department), on a 24-hour strike, filled the Sydney Town Hall to capacity on July 16. Numerous simultaneous meetings in country centres joined the protest against the state Liberal government's suddenly announced plan to privatise the service.
Chris Raper, NSW secretary of the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers' Union (LHMU), told the Sydney meeting that, despite promises to safeguard jobs after the union had shed conditions to the tune of $72 million annually from 1992-93, the Liberals saw a further $37 million in savings over the next five years in privatisation.
The government has said that cleaners can have their jobs for at least a year after transfer to a contractor. However, this means no redundancy pay. Savings are to be made by "natural attrition" of staff, perhaps by the non-employment of current temporary cleaners and those off on compensation.
Savings will also be effected by sackings of staff after the one year grace period, if not sooner, and by the non-portability of government super contribution, accumulated long service, holiday and sick leave.
The government has said that contractors will offer "similar" hours. The contractors are currently seeking a new award allowing them to stand down cleaners without pay in school holidays.
Janet Riley, from Victoria, informed the meeting that her school used to have eight cleaners. After privatisation, that was slashed to two, and her daughter, a pupil at the school, informed her that the dust piles up and bins are on the nose, adding to the danger for the health of children, especially asthma sufferers.
The Property Services Council (described by Raper as a "bosses' union") and Premier John Fahey
(quoted in the Goulburn Post) have admitted that there will be job losses. Officially, all the state government has promised for the long term is an ominously vague pledge of "closely monitoring human resource policy practices".
Raper said, "If this goes ahead, many of our members have already told us their lives will fall apart. They'll be unable to pay their mortgages, or to have decent retirements. Whole families are threatened. Many of these cleaners are sole parents.
"Contract cleaning employers traditionally have high staff turnover, and they're in it purely for the profit."
Beneficiaries could include Neville Wran, former Labor premier of NSW, who started up a contract cleaning company after he ceased being a professional politician. Contractors are to obtain five-year contracts, unlike the one-year security given the cleaners. Currently, the Government Cleaning Service covers public schools, TAFE colleges, police stations, court houses and state government buildings.
The meetings passed a resolution for a campaign of rolling stoppages, as part of a wider campaign on industrial, legal and political fronts.
During the meeting, the floor was given to state Labor MP Ernie Page, who praised the cleaners for having "efficiency as good as the private sector". He vowed to introduce a bill called the Government Cleaning Services Retention Bill, which he admitted would need the support of the three independents in the Legislative Assembly and the Democrats and the Reverend Fred and Elaine Nile in the Legislative Council.
The last names caused a murmur of disquiet around Sydney Town Hall. Page urged all and sundry to pester their local member and those he'd named to ensure passage of the bill.
The issue in the meeting seemed to be the job and conditions losses from privatisation. The two are usually inseparable: for example, the Commonwealth Bank is seeking to retrench 8000 staff in preparation
for the next slice of its privatisation.
The moral seems to be that unions in government-owned industries only create attractive conditions for privatisation by agreeing to cut some jobs and working conditions under the rich rhetoric of "commercial reality" and "competition".