Cleaners Walk: We Are Not Robots!

Date: 07 April 2000

Over-worked NSW government school cleaners have downed brooms and walked off the job for 48 hours over a drive for faster work that has left them with just nine minutes to clean a classroom.

Menzies cleaner and Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union member Miriam Horasio told the Labor Council's weekly meeting that dedicated cleaners were no longer able to keep classrooms clean.

Miriam, who has worked as a school cleaner for 24 years since emigrating from Uruguay, said that since the cleaning service was contracted out to private operators by the former Coalition Government, conditions had worsened to the point that were now at crisis.

"When they sold the Government Cleaning Service we were promised we wouldn't suffer any changes in the future," she said.

But since the change teams have been cut from three cleaners to two; times for classrooms reduced to just nine minutes and, now, a further 24 per cent productivity target has been placed on cleaners.

And when a cleaner is sick, there are no relief cleaners, meaning the existing workers must cover.

"We now have nine minutes to do a classroom - that includes dusting, cleaning tables, windows, vacuuming and polishing floors," Miriam said. "How can one person do all that? It's a physical impossibility!"

The cleaners have called on the Premier and the Department of Education to review the contracts, rather than sending around inspectors to critcise their work.

LHMU state secretary Annie Owens says the current action follows Menzies' refusal to heed the findings of a review by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Review Tribunal (IPART) who found that: targets were ambitious over the life of the contract and very ambitious over the first two years of the contract.

The Labor Council has endorsed the action and called on the NSW Government to intervene in the dispute

For further information

Contact:	Peter Lewis
Union:	Labor Council of NSW
WWW:	http://www.lhmu.org.au

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