Friday, February 13, 2009

Underpaid Housing staff comment

[DH thought this comment on her post about underpaid housing staff was worth lifting out of obscurity].
 
Yes, I would think $23 p.h. is definitely below par for someone with SW experience - though it's a bit hard to tell unless you're familiar with all the relevant Classes & Years, as per the Award rates for the Community sector which are accessible on the net, at least for Victoria. I get $25.58p.h. for my casual work in the welfare sector.

In Victoria Office of Housing staff are known to be paid at the lowest rate on the State Public Service Award. Yet their caseloads are just as described in the ad you've reprinted from NSW. When I talked to the CPSU official responsible for public housing staff a couple of years ago he said that their workloads were basically unmanageable and that he was worried about the psycho-emotional health of some of his OH staff.

This week an OH worker told me that all the rent rebate reviews which were due to be processed by Nov 23, '08 were still underway (the new rebate system has everyone's rent fixed for an identical 6 month period, so they all have the same processing date).

But ultimately pay and conditions should be lobbied on by the CPSU. Could it be that the union's ties to Labor are impeding their capacity to be a robust union? I wonder how these examples from NSW & Vic compare to other states?

There's no doubt that public tenants would benefit from having better paid & qualified staff.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

After speaking to the front end staff here in Brisbane, there is a hr issue. The staff appear unable to read or understand English or accept that their victims/tenants have a right to be protected from other tenants. If they don't like it there, the staff can find another job. Why delay the inevitable?