Immigration detention staff strike over | Australian Markets

Immigration detention staff are putting nationally over the transition from one non-public jail conglomerate to a different.

Staff at 9 onshore Australian immigration detention centres went on strike for 4 hours to eight.30am on Monday, with one other four-hour motion deliberate for Monday afternoon.

This follows two-hour strikes on Friday.

The dispute is centred round what the United Staff Union (UWU) calls a “huge and avoidable mess” – the outgoing operator being “unable to deal fairly with workers who are seeking legitimate redundancies in a contract changeover”.

Outgoing detention centre operator Serco says all workers can be paid their legal entitlements.

Detention centre controller Australian Border Drive has been contacted for remark.

The UWU says it has made concessions over “business continuity” during the handover, however Serco was holding out on comparatively small redundancy provides.

The union argues Serco telling workers to resign is an attempt to keep away from paying redundancies, and Serco must be paying redundancies as a result of staff are getting into a greenfields settlement with a new supplier.

“It’s a stinging indictment of Serco that a multibillion-dollar corporation is unable to deal fairly with workers who are seeking legitimate redundancies in a contract changeover,” UWU allied industries director Godfrey Moase stated.

“In some centres, the contract transition is occurring on March 6 – less than two weeks away – and detainees, workers and the community can’t afford to be impacted by a continuing struggle with the outgoing contractor.

“It’s a debacle of Serco’s making that workers are facing threats of being dragged through the courts.”

The Administration and Coaching Company gained Australia’s $2.3bn immigration detention contract in December.

The American company is the third largest non-public jail operator within the US.

As of December, there are 979 people in Australia’s immigration detention centres. Of these people, 321 have been held for more than one yr.

There are six immigration detention centres throughout the nation. UWU members working at these six, plus three “alternative places of detention”, are putting.

The involved events will head to the Truthful Work Fee later on Monday.

A Serco spokesperson instructed NewsWire staff going from Serco to the new operator “are simply changing shirts, not jobs”.

New operators, Administration and Coaching Company subsidiary – Safe Journeys – will begin operating the centres from March. Serco has provided to pay the new operator a lump sum equal of every staff’ depart entitlements.

Internally, Serco has set up a transition unit to seek out staff new roles ought to they wish to stick with Serco, with the “preservation of redundancy entitlements if the new role does not work out”, the Serco spokesperson stated.

Serco additionally guarantees staff who’re made redundant and don’t go into a comparable position with the new operator or with Serco can be paid redundancy.

On high of these redundancy agreements, the union desires a 15 per cent pay rise. The union did lately get a 3.5 per cent pay rise from the new operator.

Serco provided 5 per cent and a $750 retention bonus, however the union remains to be pushing for a 15 per cent rise.