The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission handed down its pay equity decision in relation to the Queensland Services Union award application on May 6^th. This decision acknowledges the historical undervaluing of the work performed by non government organisations in the delivery of much needed services to the most disadvantaged Queenslanders.

 

As a consequence of this decision the state government announced a $414M injection of funds over the next four years so that the wage increases resulting from the QIRC decision could be passed on to staff working in non government organisations.

 

In late July, QCOSS, along with a number of other peak organisations, met with the Director General of Communities, Linda Apelt, to be briefed on where things are up to with government funding for the wages decision.  Most of you will have received by now or will be receiving shortly a letter from your relevant Minister explaining the situation.  If you haven’t yet received your letter you can read a scanned copy here.

 

At the meeting, the Director General provided us with some of the background on how the services will be funded but really there is not much more information to pass on to you other than what is in the letter.  None of us will know the quantum of the funding until you receive another letter from the Minister and the first lot of funding in mid September.  We have been told there will be no right of appeal if a service does not believe their activities have been properly evaluated. The broad decisions have already been made by Cabinet – the quantum of money and the way the money will be prioritised – and none of the peaks have been able to influence that. We emphasised our concern about the inequities created and in particular, that the services that are likely to be lower down of list may be some of those involved in prevention and early intervention activities i.e they are not providing services at the “crisis” end where the emphasis is.  So we have begun an exercise to estimate what the total shortfall is and you have my assurance this will be a key focus of our lobbying activity over the next year.

 

In order to assist organisations to understand the implications of  the new funding and to give them an idea of the anticipated costs and implications we have developed the  Pay Equity Assessment Tool comprising of two documents; the Pay Equity Worksheet and the Planning Framework. To access these documents please click here.

 

QCOSS will also be running a number of information sessions across the state throughout August and September. These sessions will:

Staff from the Queensland Services Union will also be in attendance at some of the workshops to brief you about the new award.

 

The calendar of workshops will be finalised in the coming weeks and will be distributed through eNews, QCOSS staff and the QCOSS and Community Door Websites as it becomes available.