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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-10-29 Daily Xml
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CLEAN START CAMPAIGN

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (15:10): As a long-term member of the Miscellaneous Workers Union, I was very proud to see that the Clean Start campaign, which I have mentioned in this house before, is continuing. The Clean Start campaign is an international campaign and represents cleaners all around the world.

The local branch of the Miscellaneous Workers Union chose Friday 17 October (which, as members here would be aware, was World Anti-Poverty Day) to celebrate the considerable achievements of one of our lowest paid groups in Australia, that is, cleaners. I think they probably rival child-care workers, for reasons I do not understand, because obviously we value our child-care workers as well. The Clean Start campaign talks about cleaners. It fits in with other campaigns around the world to sign up cleaning companies to set principles that improve pay and working conditions for cleaners while delivering improved productivity and outcomes for their employers.

The venue for this celebration was the wonderful Migration Museum, and I digress for a minute to say that I understand that the Migration Museum's fantastic leader, Viv Szekeres, is about to retire. I hope at some stage to bring back information about her wonderful career and contribution to South Australia. As I said, the venue was the Migration Museum on North Terrace. A group of Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union Members working in the cleaning industry gathered with the Assistant Secretary of the state branch, Chris Field; the ACTU President, Sharan Burrow; and SA Unions' secretary, Janet Giles, to discuss the campaign.

I understand that a number of cleaning contractors have already signed up to the Clean Start campaign. The ISS Facility Services, with 460,000 employees around the world, has formally signed an international agreement as a responsible contractor. The gathering was very positive about the results of its long-term campaign, and it is certain in the knowledge that basic principles of organising to defend and extend basic rights hold as true as ever—a lifelong trade union principle, but one that has certainly worked in this area.

Having been a cleaner myself, certainly through my student days, I have had first-hand experience of how difficult it can be to be a cleaner. The expectations of your employer are quite often unrealistic (certainly in my case), not so much in relation to the standard of the cleaning you are to perform but more the amount of time you are allocated to do that task. I still think that that is an issue we need to grapple with.

I know that we have a fantastic cleaner at the Ashford electorate office, but that person spends more than his 15 minutes allocated time each day to clean our office, and he does it on his own time. Although I have counselled him not to do that, because he has such pride in his job he likes to make sure that he does it well. So, this is not just an issue for people who employ cleaners in this place, it is also an issue that the government, amongst other employers, needs to think about.

I challenge any member in this place to be able to shoulder a workload on a consistent basis that is equivalent to cleaning four houses in an hour. I really do congratulate the Miscellaneous Workers Union on continuing to support its members and making sure that the issue of cleaning, which is a very important and fundamental job, is in the focus of all of our minds.

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