To deliver the highest standard of care, the Victorian Public Mental Health system requires the work and skills of many different disciplines. HACSU members recognise that to be successful and achieve our goals, we must all stand united.

To recap, when the Department of Child Protection released a tender that would lock in below award wages our Union took action and has been working to resolve the issues. After weeks of direct advocacy, your action over the last 24 hours has helped lock in a win and today we have spoken with the Minister Hildyard's office to confirm the Department would update the tender that has now been published to the sector. We thank the Minister and the Department for listening to you, the frontline workers. Now, our work continues to: • Push for a state wide fair jobs code for community services to ensure all Government tenders reflect fair wages and secure jobs • Win a fair Award Award classification structure to properly reflect your skills and experience As we've experienced overnight, when community sector workers take action we can change Government policy and win good outcomes for our members. Share this win with your workmates and ask them to join you in our Union so we can keep improving working conditions across the youth and community services sector: www.asusant.com/sant.com

Employee pharmacists are Australia’s lowest-paid health professionals and are leaving the industry in droves. Professional Pharmacists Australia (PPA), the union for employee pharmacists and technicians, has submitted a comprehensive case to the Fair Work Commission calling for a long-overdue minimum Award wage increase for pharmacists of $188.30 per week and a 14% increase for Interns, Pharmacists In Charge and Pharmacy Managers. But the Australian Private Hospitals Industrial Association (APHA) is calling on the Fair Work Commission to block all proposed pay increases. Pharmacists deserve better and are calling on APHA to acknowledge the vital role of pharmacists by amending their submission to the Fair Work Commission to support a fair pay increase.  Sign this petition to demand that APHA stop blocking a pay increase to the minimum award rate. Let’s show APHA that their stance isn’t just unsustainable – it’s deeply unpopular.  Pharmacists deserve better, and with your signature, pharmacists can put pressure on APHA to change their position.  Together, we can demand change. Support Australia’s pharmacists today: 1. Sign the petition to show your support for fair wages for pharmacists. 2. Share this petition with everyone you know – pharmacists, healthcare professionals, and community members who rely on and value pharmacists’ expertise.

The ASU has been fighting for years to have the Portable Long Service Authority allow workers to apply for registration rather than waiting for their employer to do the right thing (with no consequences from the Authority). While the Authority recently created a webform to this end, the ASU has had no indication that these applications are being processed!  What we have seen from the Authority over the last 5 years since the Portable Long Service Scheme went live is:  • prioritizing collaborative ‘education’ of employers who repeatedly flout the legislation and continual ‘last chance’ warnings from the Authority;  • dismissing and ignoring Community Services workers – including many workers being told to be patient for a period of several years, while the Authority has friendly discussions with employers;  • refusing (until mid-2024) to implement a Worker Application form, despite this being a legislative requirement; and  • treating their role as financial fund managers rather than service providers for Community Services Workers;  and regulators of sketchy employers.   ASU Community Services members fought hard to get this scheme in place, and we’re not going to let the Authority leave eligible workers out in the cold.

Tasmanians deserved a budget that invested in our critical public services, a budget that provided the resourcing required for workers to effectively deliver high quality public services to the community.   Privatisation and cuts are never the solution.   The cuts to be made through “efficiency dividends" have drawn significant criticism from prominent independent economist Saul Eslake who has labelled them “crude” and a “very poor means of achieving meaningful and lasting expenditure savings”.    The CPSU is campaigning for change (not cuts) to save our public services. 

We hope you’ll be there for them too, as they fight against wage theft and for better pay and conditions that will allow them to meet the rising cost of living and spend more time with their families.

Interpreters are vital to ensuring access to justice, healthcare, and essential services.  Interpreters facilitate communication between people with limited English proficiency, Deaf and hard of hearing and the public sector professionals they interact with in important, or even critical, life situations. Court Services Victoria and Language Service Providers (LSPs) are cutting interpreters' pay and reducing their hours, adding stress to an already demanding job.    Under the RNS, interpreters are considered officers of the court. Currently, the conditions faced by interpreters are well below any standard applicable to an officer of a court.   Recent changes undermine long-standing fee structures, leaving interpreters with a further degradation of their pay and conditions – pay and conditions that are not commensurate with the role, responsibilities and expectations quite rightly, of the professionals and community members who rely on them.   The Victorian Government initiated reforms to language services in 2018 which have yet to be completed. This has left the sector exposed to downward price pressure from Government agencies leading to aggressive competition among LSPs at the expense of the workforce. This has a direct impact on outcomes in justice, law enforcement, healthcare and all service provision generally.   The Victorian Government’s failure to address procurement reform has led to further erosion of interpreters’ pay and conditions in the form of: • Reduced minimum engagements; • Covert changes to fee calculation, resulting in lower rates of pay; • No increases to recommended rates in 6+ years; • Reduced pay for working remotely despite its increased complexity. For the justice sector and the community, this means: • The language services sector is becoming unsustainable because: • Experienced interpreters are leaving the sector. • Graduates are not entering the profession due to the poor conditions. • Failures can occur in the administration of justice due to: • Communities being disadvantaged by an absence of procedural fairness in the justice system. • A system that discriminates. • Government and their agencies will be in breach of their own multicultural, access and equity and inclusion policies. • All community services will be jeopardised similarly to the legal sector. • The greater financial consequence of system failures will be borne by the taxpayer. Judicial Council on Diversity and Inclusion Recommended National Standards (RNS) The RNS were produced by a specialist committee appointed by the former JCCD (now the Judicial Council on Diversity and Inclusion - JCDI) comprising Interpreting and Legal Experts, with its first edition published in 2017 and the second in 2022. The RNS are endorsed by the Council of Chief Justices of Australia. Their purpose was to develop frameworks, best practice advice, and resources to support procedural fairness and equality of treatment for all court users throughout Australia. The Implementation of the RNS is not only vital to promoting and ensuring compliance with the rules of procedural fairness. The RNS are concurrently intended to ensure that the interpreting profession throughout Australia develops to the benefit of the administration of justice generally. The RNS are not universally adopted in Victorian Courts. This is troubling, given the diversity of Victoria’s community, we would expect that Victoria should be leading the way. Regrettably, this is not the case. Join Us in Demanding Fairness for Interpreters and the Communities that they serve. All interpreters, translators, legal professionals, healthcare workers, and professionals who rely on interpreters at work, please sign this petition! Let’s show the Victorian Government that we stand together for justice, fair treatment, and the right to fair pay and conditions.   Get involved: Contact [email protected] for more information or to find out how to further support the campaign. Petition To The Legislative Council of Victoria: We, the undersigned residents of Victoria draw to the attention of the Legislative Council, the ongoing degradation of conditions and standards in Victorian Courts. We note the reduced terms of engagement for court interpreters by Court Services Victoria and the stalled procurement reform for this sector by the Victorian Government and the failure to universally adopt the Recommended National Standards for Working with Interpreters in Courts and Tribunals in Victorian Courts.   We, the undersigned residents of Victoria, therefore, request that the Legislative Council of Victoria call on the Victorian Government to:   1. Restore the previous engagement terms for interpreters in Victorian Courts, with half-day or full-day rates. 2. Adopt, fund, and implement the JCDI Recommended National Standards for Working with Interpreters in Courts and Tribunals, in full, within Victorian Courts and Tribunals. 3. Resume consultations towards procurement reforms for the language services sector to mandate higher standards in professionalism and quality. 

Medical librarians are highly skilled and specialized Allied Health Professionals who deserve to be treated with respect. The plan to transition the library to an infrastructure-only service (focused on e-resources, document delivery, and interlibrary loans) is short-sighted and disregards the valuable contributions of these dedicated workers. We, the undersigned, demand RMH reverses this decision and takes immediate steps to support Medical Librarians and all Victorian patients by committing to maintain the essential library service.

This affects everyone in Victoria because we all access this service.     The Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria has been recording significant life events for Victorians since 1853. The Registry and the people who work there are trusted custodians of our precious records, and there is no reason to change that.    The Registries of Births, Deaths and Marriages in every Australian State and Territory are all government owned and run as the important work they do is an essential public service.   Privatisation of publicly-owned assets doesn’t work and doesn’t benefit Victorians. Isn’t that why the Victorian Government has reclaimed ownership of the State Electricity Commission (SEC)?   Any further commercialisation of Births, Deaths and Marriages will mean the cost of registering and certifying a life event will increase - that’s what happens when profit is the motive for providing the service.    The security of our personal records is too important to be trusted to one or more corporations. The lack of care taken with our data by the private sector is laid bare with regular reports of data breaches - VicRoads, Optus, and Medibank for example, are all fresh in people’s memories.    We can’t afford for our most private records, like our birth certificates, to be trusted to anyone but the public service.   

Our hospitals rely on support services to keep running. If we don't have enough cleaners, infections in the hospital increase. If we don't have enough storepersons, the hospital runs out of medical supplies. If we don't have enough wardspersons, patients can't move around the hospital. Staffing levels are already dangerously low in Western Sydney. Allowing HealthShare to take over these jobs will only make things worse for our community.

To help bring a fair pay upgrade to the covid class of 2020. 

Australia's geography means our communities - regional and urban - depend on reliable, well-functioning airlines. Our citizens' ability to travel between cities and regional towns must not be dependent on market conditions or the whim of airline owners. If the Federal Government owned a stake in Rex - and appointed a "Safe and Secure Skies" Commission as an independent regulator as the Transport Workers Union have long called for - airline workers and the flying public would have a meaningful say in the decisions that impact our travel and our lives.  Regional communities rely on Rex. In many cases it is the only airline that goes to a range of small country towns. The Federal Government needs to consider buying an equity stake or outright purchasing the airline to ensure our regional communities aren't left behind without connections to major cities and other regional communities. Victorian, SA, NSW and Queensland Premiers have already voiced their support for Federal Government intervention to ensure Rex continues to operate. The Government needs to act now to save the airline and their hundreds of workers facing redundancy!