School cleaners are an essential part of school communities.
They deserve secure and well paid employment.
It’s what’s best for the kids. It’s what’s best for school employees. And it’s what’s best for our public schools.
Queensland, Western Australia, the ACT and Tasmania already directly employ their school cleaners through the government, so why can’t we?
Contract companies are run for profit, not for service. Cleaners are required to do more with less and this places immense and unacceptable pressure on our cleaners and results in sub-quality services
– United Workers Union
I’m a cleaner. I’ve been a cleaner for over 20 years, cleaning schools. I love cleaning schools because you watch the kids grow up. It is at the stage where I’m embarrassed to say I am a school cleaner, because the standard has gone down that much. We are losing hours in school holidays, we are told we have to take holidays with or without pay. If you’ve got no holiday pay, you are not going to get paid. Then we go back and we’ve got a week to get the school back up to scratch. It is not happening.
– Julie Hooper (school cleaner)
