Health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith backed Canberra Hospital cleaner pay increase, United Workers Union says

Cleaners at Canberra Hospital, who work for contractor ISS, have been granted a temporary and backdated pay rise of 5.37 per cent.

Represented by the United Workers Union, they have been advocating for a wage increase of around 11 per cent to be paid in line with ACT government cleaners.

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Acting Minister for Health Chris Steel said Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith "strongly supported an increase of wages" for the cleaners.

Ms Stephen-Smith met with a delegate and accepted a petition on November 18.

United Workers Union Director of Property Services, Lyndal Ryan, said the workers were extremely grateful for the support.

"The workers here sought support through a petition, which they delivered to the health minister recently. And she clearly took that on board and we're sure that it's through her intervention that this amount of money was paid," Ms Ryan said.

"We're very pleased that she chose to intervene in that, to make sure that these people would have some money in their pocket at this time whilst negotiations continue."

ISS will backpay the workers from July 2022 in January 2023.

"That should take some of the pressure off," Ms Ryan said.

"This is not a fair wage yet, but it's a down payment on it."

Full-time Canberra Hospital cleaner and father-of-two, Rajesh Subedi, said he works additional jobs to get by.

"The pay I get from ISS, it's not enough for my rent, for food. I've got two kids and my wife," he said.

"Apart from [the] ISS cleaning job, me and my wife, we do part-time jobs.

"We are struggling a lot."

Mr Subedi said hospital cleaners deserved to be paid at least on-par with other government cleaners, such as those who work in schools.

"With COVID, SARS, other infectious diseases, we [are exposed] to infectious diseases, and we need to deal with different sorts of cleaning," he said.

The ACT Education directorate has directly employed cleaners since early 2020, having previously used contractors.

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Cleaner Ben Lawton said he welcomed the increase but would still fight for a full 11 per cent.

"We were expecting to have a pay rise before Christmas and this is a compromise. It's better than nothing but we've got to keep fighting," he said.

Mr Lawton previously spoke to The Canberra Times about living in a caravan and struggling to get by, despite working at the hospital full-time.

He said he received a very positive reaction to his story.

A reader has given Mr Lawton money for driving lessons, which he wants to take so he can take on more cleaning shifts. He will have his first lesson in January.

"Someone was able to step up and help me with that, so I'm really, really grateful for that," he said.

"I'm glad that people have resonated with my message and rallied around the point that there's thousands of people like me in the ACT and it's not going to get any easier unless we do something."

ISS has been contacted for comment.

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