Becoming an Industry: The Struggle of Social and Community Workers for Award Coverage, 1976—2001

Abstract

Until the 1990s, most workers employed by non-government community services organizations were excluded from the most basic right of Australian 'industrial citizenship' -award coverage. Expected to be a formality by the newly-formed Australian Social Welfare Union, establishing an award for the non-profit social and community services sector became a grinding struggle at both federal and state levels against the resistance of both LiberalNational coalition and Labor party governments, the major charities and other unions stretching from the 1970s through the 1990s. Our explanation of why the struggle for industrial recognition was so long and hard emphasizes the lack of social recognition for care work and contradictions among care workers between Journal of Industrial Relations 498 their roles as professionals, caring for others, and unionists -factors that led to internal, institutional, strategic and cultural resistance to an award for the social and community services workers.

Public perception of social work and social workers in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…There is a belief purported in many studies that the media influences public perception of the profession and of social workers (NASW, 2003;Briggs, Meagher & Healy, 2007;Brodie, Nottingham & Plunkett, 2008;Jones, Vela, Vang, & Walde, 2006;Zugazaga, Surette, Mendez, & Otto, 2008;Davidson & King, 2005;Turner, 2011). In summarising comments by focus group members in the Davidson and King study it was noted that:…”

In a Different Way: Social Unionism in the Nonprofit Social Services-An Australian/Canadian Comparison

“…Some claim the workforce is 80 percent female (Anglicare 2006), while others claim closer to 75 percent (Saunders 2004). The NPSS tend to target their programs at the most marginal and underserved populations, providing a variety of services including housing, temporary shelter, counseling, mediation, antiviolence, trauma, child welfare, immigration and settlement, and community development (Canadian Policy Research Networks 2003;Briggs, Meagher, and Healy 2007). Though perplexing to those working in more traditional environments, agency mission and the opportunity to work with those on the margins of society provides the predominantly female workforce with a larger meaning to their work and takes the hard edge off low wages and poor working conditions (Nickson et al 2008;Brisbois and Saunders 2003).…”

New Australian Working Time Minimum Standards: Reproducing the Same Old Gendered Architecture?

“…The nature of the work that is protected is also crucial. In terms of paid care work, apart from those covered by occupation-specific awards such as the Nurses Award, community services work has historically not been understood as 'work' which is protected industrially (Briggs et al, 2007). The undervaluation of care work has arguably contributed to the poorer working time conditions reflected in the Aged Care and SCHCDS Awards discussed in this article, which not only flow on to a lack of predictability of hours for casual and part-time workers, but also lead to lower (and unpredictable) wages.…”

“…In community services in particular, low unionization rates and the lack of effective bargaining power (Briggs et al, 2007), significantly due to the nature of the work, inadequate government funding models, the number of small workplaces and the proportion of employees who work in the client's home, have had two main effects. Not only were key working time protections eroded through enterprise bargaining, but award-reliant employees were left dependent on minimum standards that both facilitated increased casualization and failed to protect the increasing number of non-standard workers in the industry.…”