Unions say conditions and pay are under threat for hundreds of school and hospital cleaners, security guards and maintenance contractors in Canberra as the government moves to an outside manager.
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The government expects to save $3.4 million a year and has already shortlisted six companies in its search for a head contractor.
At the moment, cleaning, maintenance and security contracts are handled directly by the government, many as small, site-specific contracts.
Unions say the government plans to move all of the work to an outside company to manage, repeating the model it uses for public housing, where maintenance is handled by Spotless.
The Auditor-General pointed this month to failings in the Spotless contract, which controls $42 million a year of maintenance.
Auditor Maxine Cooper found inadequate control of sub-contractors by Spotless, which is supposed to do regular checks on the work. She also questioned the accuracy of information from Spotless, and pointed to the potential for conflict of interest, given Spotless gives $1.1 million of contracts to its own in-house maintenance provider.
ACT branch secretary for United Voice Lyndal Ryan said there were about 400 cleaners in schools, 150 in health and 100 in public service offices, some on small single-building contracts. About 100 security guards worked in courts and other public buildings. The plan to use an outside manager threatened their wages, conditions and security of employment, she said.
Currently, if a new contractor took over, existing workers must be offered jobs. Rules also covered safety, training and equipment, and contractors' industrial relations records were checked.
The cleaning and security industries had "appalling" records on wages and conditions and needed stringent management, she said.
Ms Ryan said the lack of response to its concerns was more worrying still.
"We've said we're concerned about this, can we have an undertaking about it. And the silence has deafening," she said.
"Governments put things out to contract because they think things can be managed better from the private sector and they think there's going to be some savings. But what they fail to recognise is that contract management takes a lot of resources in its own right," she said. "Unless you're prepared to resource the management of contracts very heavily it's very, very difficult to manage them."
A government spokesperson said a "range of contract work currently independently arranged with hundreds of individual contracts across government will be integrated into the Total Facilities Management contract".
"This will enable us to better manage the vast range of contracts that currently exist. This is part of the government's plan to modernise our contracts and service arrangements and achieve the same outcomes while saving ratepayers money."
The government expected to save up to $3.4 million a year, or $30 million over the contract period.
Unions ACT secretary Alex White said Unions ACT had been told on December 10 that no decisions had been made, but had subsequently discovered that the education directorate had already met school cleaners to tell them the new system would be rolled out over two years as agreements expired. On December 17, the first round of expressions of interest closed.
Attempts to get information since had been largely fruitless.
"It becomes impossible to get any kind of engagement with procurement because it's reached the confidential stage," he said. "We want to be involved in this process."
Unions ACT had been told the new system would even out the variability in contracts across the public service, and all companies that currently delivered services would be invited to subcontract. But the public housing example showed the government was not capable of managing head contractors.
There was just one local company among the six shortlisted, he said, and among the group were companies so big they dwarfed the government itself.
"The government might feel they're making a saving on the one hand but what happens is they'll have to pay for it somehow," he said, pointing to the case of one large property owner in Canberra - which he wouldn't name - which had cut cleaning wages by about $20 a week. The result was that the cleaners living in public housing had renegotiated their rent with the ACT government down by $20, leaving the government effectively subsidising the lower pay rates.
This month, six companies were shortlisted: Brookfield Global Integrated Solutions, DTZ (trading as Cushman and Wakefield), Jones Lang LaSalle, Programmed Facilities Management, Spotless Facilities Services, and Broadspectrum (formerly Transfield).
