DISABILITY workers have renewed protests against what they say is the proposed privatisation of public services.
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A three-day “blitz” of calls to residents, information hand-outs and driving a giant billboard through Bendigo is now under way.
A Health and Community Services Union delegate said the state government had broken a promise that it would not privatise disability services, which he said would see a significant drop in wages and further casualisation of the workforce.
“What we’re concerned about is service outcomes for the clients we support,” he said.
He said up to 300 workers in the Loddon region would be affected by any changes.
One man, who has worked with one disability service for 39 years, told the Bendigo Advertiser that if his pay conditions were cut, he “may as well look at something else”.
He said he was concerned that ultimately it would be clients of disability services, “the most vulnerable people in Victoria”, who would suffer from any privatisation.
A spokeswoman for disability minister Martin Foley said the government was “expanding the delivery of disability services in partnership with the non-government sector” to deliver the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
“A transfer will only occur if the government is satisfied that an organisation meets its key criteria around quality and fairness and we will ensure that staff are supported to transfer on fair terms,” she said.
The spokeswoman said the government needed to ensure it had the additional services and supports in place for the 27,000 extra Victorians expected to enter the disability system with the implementation of the NDIS, and to do so it needed to double the workforce.