South-west disability workers concerned about the privatisation of their sector and a lack of job security rallied together on Wednesday morning.
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About 20 Warrnambool and Portland disability workers took strike action in part to protest against difficulty negotiating a new enterprise agreement.
In 2015, the state government announced some previously state-run disability services, including independent living programs, would be opened up to non-government organisations.
Health and Community Services Union lead organiser James McWhinney said up to 50 staff supported 40 clients with a disability across eight community residential units in Portland and Warrnambool.
“It’s causing a great deal of angst for the families of people living with a disability,” he said.
“They’re concerned. For some of these people, they’ve been working with the same residents for 15 to 20 years, providing support.
“The families and residents are concerned that if it gets moved out to another service, one of the big issues is that the non-government services that they’re potentially moving out to have much higher levels of casualisation than the public sector.”
Mr McWhinney said about 40 per cent of the workforce in the private sector was casualised.
“What you end up with is you won’t have that same regularity, quality of care and familiarity of the disability support workers as they currently have,” he said.
Mr McWhinney said expressions of interest were opened up to non-government providers earlier this year, but the precise timing of changes remained unclear.
Warrnambool’s Bronwen Williams, who has been a disability support worker for 27 years, said there were a lot of fears in the face of the shift to non-government providers – both for workers and clients.
“We’re pretty lucky in Warrnambool so the clients get consistent workers for long lengths of time,” she said.
Ms Williams said facing job insecurity over a long period of time was difficult.
Worker Sonia McDonald, who has worked in the sector for 25 years, said the workers developed a good rapport with the families of people with a disability living in community residential units.
“They’re happy with the staff and they trust us,” Ms McDonald said.