Essential Workers Deserve Better
Invest in Essential Workers: Pay Rises, Secure Jobs, and hiring more staff
High quality services require good quality jobs. But after two years of the pandemic, essential workers are tired and worn down. Worse yet, their pay, conditions and job security is falling. They face a real pay cut of $6100 over the next three years and staff shortages are rising. If we as a state don’t provide decent careers in essential work, we won’t receive good quality public services.
The NSW Government must act:
• Invest in public services by growing their workers, ending the overwork and understaffing.
• Abolish unfair pay caps and lifts wages to keep up with the cost of living. Lifting wages will attract more workers to essential work, increase the reputation of essential work as providing a good and decent career, and lift the quality of public services as morale increases.
• Create more secure jobs in essential services. It is illogical that all workers in essential services are not offered full time permanent roles.
• Stop privatisation and ensure same-job same-pay in Government contracts. This will stop a race to the bottom where business compete on lower wages with insecure work. They do this to make their services cheaper to win Government contracts.
NSW is already falling behind, we must act urgently.