Very few Canberrans would be able to tell you what a general service officer is. But you'd certainly notice if they stopped working.
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GSOs are basically the people who do all the vital, unglamorous things that makes our city actually function. The range of work they cover is broad. They supply the physical labour, trades and technical skills required by every road, stadium, park and hospital in the ACT. This makes them similar to council workers in other jurisdictions.
They're the men and women you see working on the side of the road in the middle of a freezing Canberra winter. They cleaned our bus stops and public bathrooms during the pandemic. You see them mowing hundreds of kilometres of nature strips during our long hot summers.
Canberrans quite rightly like to remind other Australians that they live in the cleanest, best functioning city in the country. We walk the tidiest streets, drive on the best maintained roads, and rely on high quality public services delivered from safe, warm public buildings. For all this we can thanks GSOs. But how have we actually done this in practice? By making them Canberra's working poor.
The base rate for a full-time GSO working in the ACT is $50,925 a year. Now consider that the median house in Canberra is now worth about $1.1 million.
You simply can't be an effective family breadwinner in Canberra on this wage. Long before you've paid for basic accommodation, food, utilities, clothing, education expenses, and transport the kitty runs empty.
Small wonder that GSOs are telling our union they have been forced to sleep in their cars, in sub-zero conditions, because they can't afford rent.
Consider what this means. In effect, our territory government is telling people to work their guts out in difficult, often unpleasant, but fundamentally necessary jobs. And in exchange they provide a wage that prohibits those workers from living with dignity in the city they service. It's unconscionable.
Sometimes it's the little details that really reveal the dynamics of a situation. GSOs who clean public toilets have a tough job to do for all the reasons you imagine and probably a few you don't.
So the government rightly recognises this with an additional "insanitary conditions allowance" to top-up their meagre wages.
And how much is this "insanitary conditions allowance"? $2.71 a day.
It's an insult.
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This week, some 300 GSOs from across Canberra downed tools and rallied outside the ACT government offices. They demanded a restructure of classifications so the lowest-paid workers will take home at least $61,000.
Frankly, I don't consider $61,000 anywhere near fair reflection of the value GSOs provide to our city. But it would at least be a significant improvement on the shameful status quo.
To date our union has been encouraged by interactions with the ACT government on this issue. I believe they recognise that no Labor government can really preside over a situation in which public sector workers are paid a wage that renders them the working poor.
But the ACT government should also understand our union will not relent in our campaign for fairness for GSOs. These workers deserve a wage that enables them to live in the city they keep clean and functional for everyone else.
When GSOs stop work for a couple of hours, most of us don't notice. But if they were to stop work a couple of weeks, our city would be a catastrophic mess.
We should all bear that in mind.
- Zach Smith is secretary of the CFMEU ACT.
