10 signatures reached
To: Probe & Australian Taxation Office
Demand working from home for all Probe ATO workers
Update: Probe has been doing a limited work from home trial with only a few staff and saying that they will not review for another 4 weeks, and only if the performance stats for work from home staff is good. Yet again Probe is putting stats and performance above our health.
Context: Probe is an outsourcing company provide telephony customer service for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO)
Given the ATO already has already developed a comprehensive working-from-home system and many telephony-based internal ATO staff have already been working from home, Probe needs to stop delaying and prolonging giving workers the basic right to a safe working environment.
Our workers have seen many staff self isolate and use up their sick balances and take unpaid time off to protect their own welfare, and several floors in our building all moving to working-from-home, including other Probe centres as well. The Probe Coles Online campaign is an example, which allowed their staff to work from home earlier in the month.
Probe staff has already received continuous emails from the ATO, expressing the ways of integrating into working-from-home , and also providing staff with set up guides on how to work from home. Probe has been evasive and intrusive in allowing workers to take up these opportunities, and provided little to no comfort to workers, essentially "overriding" the ATO discretion to allow use of ATO systems offsite.
The irony is that if our staff fall sick from coming to work, we have not been promised special sick leave, and will therefore be rendered "ineligible" to work.
The onus is not just on Probe. The Australian Taxation Office cannot be evasive and turn a blind eye just because our workers are outsourced, when everything we do follow Australian Public Service "APS" values, procedures & protocols. ATO have already turned a blind eye to the fact that our casual staff don't get sick leave, compared to APS casual staff that have been promised special sick leave in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, and that our workers receive a pathetic base rate of $21.54 an hour to supposedly "represent a government department", with our staff carrying out immensely similar tasks & responsibilities to APS 2 & 3 roles.
Please share privately not via social media to ensure that you are not breaching Probe's social media policy.
Context: Probe is an outsourcing company provide telephony customer service for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO)
Given the ATO already has already developed a comprehensive working-from-home system and many telephony-based internal ATO staff have already been working from home, Probe needs to stop delaying and prolonging giving workers the basic right to a safe working environment.
Our workers have seen many staff self isolate and use up their sick balances and take unpaid time off to protect their own welfare, and several floors in our building all moving to working-from-home, including other Probe centres as well. The Probe Coles Online campaign is an example, which allowed their staff to work from home earlier in the month.
Probe staff has already received continuous emails from the ATO, expressing the ways of integrating into working-from-home , and also providing staff with set up guides on how to work from home. Probe has been evasive and intrusive in allowing workers to take up these opportunities, and provided little to no comfort to workers, essentially "overriding" the ATO discretion to allow use of ATO systems offsite.
The irony is that if our staff fall sick from coming to work, we have not been promised special sick leave, and will therefore be rendered "ineligible" to work.
The onus is not just on Probe. The Australian Taxation Office cannot be evasive and turn a blind eye just because our workers are outsourced, when everything we do follow Australian Public Service "APS" values, procedures & protocols. ATO have already turned a blind eye to the fact that our casual staff don't get sick leave, compared to APS casual staff that have been promised special sick leave in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, and that our workers receive a pathetic base rate of $21.54 an hour to supposedly "represent a government department", with our staff carrying out immensely similar tasks & responsibilities to APS 2 & 3 roles.
Please share privately not via social media to ensure that you are not breaching Probe's social media policy.
Why is this important?
Enough is enough.
Respect our staff.
Protect our health
Respect our staff.
Protect our health