ASU Celebration Of The Community Youth Support Scheme Decision

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The Hon. PENNY SHARPE (Parliamentary Secretary) [10.48 p.m.]: In recent weeks there has been a lot of discussion about the collapse of the financial system and the impact this is having across our economy. Our governments, both State and Federal, have taken significant steps to try to lessen the impact that greed within fundamentalist capitalist market systems has caused, but, of course, we all live in a society not just an economy. Even with all the remedial action, many will fall through the cracks of our still wealthy society. Many men, women and children, through no fault of their own, will find themselves jobless, and perhaps homeless and desperately in need of support. Those vulnerable people will rely on the professional and dedicated work of the many thousands of workers across New South Wales who work in our community sector.

Last Friday I attended a dinner hosted by the Australian Services Union [ASU] that celebrated the achievements of that workforce. In particular, the dinner marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the High Court's Community Youth Support Scheme decision-better known as the CYSS decision. It was that decision that opened the way for workers in non-government services to have the right to organise themselves into a union and to have the specialised and professional skills of their work recognised as a proper industry for the first time.

This landmark decision redefined the way the expression "industrial dispute" was to be interpreted under the Constitution. For the first time since 1908 the High Court took the popular meaning of "industrial dispute" as a dispute between employer and employees overturning the narrow literal interpretation used for decades. This decision not only allowed non-government organisation workers to be recognised for the first time in industrial law, it opened up the range of workers who could be covered by the Federal arbitration system to include employees such as State schoolteachers, firefighters and university academics. These occupations had previously been regarded as outside the definition of "industry" and could not achieve award coverage.

The story of how this case was won is worth sharing. Armed with little funding, one paid staff member, an intern and the determination to take it all away to the High Court, this dedicated group of unionists delivered. The case was brought by the Australian Social Welfare Union [ASWU]-a union of about 1,000 members-on behalf of project officers for Australia's Community Youth Support Scheme [CYSS]. Like non-government organisations community workers, Community Youth Support Scheme project officers had been excluded from the Federal arbitration system. The Australian Social Welfare Union wanted to establish an interim award for Community Youth Support Scheme employees as a precursor for a Federal award to cover workers in the non-government services and community sector.

The Community Youth Support Scheme was created in 1976, essentially to help young people find work. Local committees, often comprised of volunteers who employed project officers to work with the young people to get them work, managed the scheme. The project officers were in dispute with the committees about the pay and conditions under which they were employed and in 1979 the Australian Social Welfare Union served the Community Youth Support Scheme committees with a log of claims for an award. According to the Australian Social Welfare Union, the Federal Department of Employment and Youth Affairs, which funded Community Youth Support Scheme, was totally opposed to the making of an award for Community Youth Support Scheme workers. However, to avoid being identified as an opponent of the award it organised and funded legal representation against an award by a group of Community Youth Support Scheme committees. Among other things, it argued that Community Youth Support Scheme was not an industry and therefore no jurisdiction for an award existed.

The first major hurdle of the Australian Social Welfare Union was to prove that an industrial dispute did exist. This they did in 1979 when the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission found that an industrial dispute between the project workers and committees existed, essentially because it was clear from the evidence and inspection that Community Youth Support Scheme is primarily not a welfare or educational activity but one concerned with increasing the supply of employable labour. But the Full Bench of the Commission granted an appeal on the grounds that the activities of the Community Youth Support Scheme committees were not incidental to industry. The question of whether the work of Community Youth Support Scheme project officers was an industry was to wind its way through various legal proceeding to the High Court. On 9 June 1983 the High Court of Australia found that Community Youth Support Scheme was an industry within the meaning of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1994. At the time the Australian Financial Review called it an industrial relations revolution-and it was. The decision meant that thousands of workers and professions previously excluded from the Federal commission could now seek award coverage.

In New South Wales the non-government community services sector comprises about 7,000 organisations and delivers an extraordinary range of essential services to the people of New South Wales. The sector works with some of the most marginalised and disadvantaged people in our community. The case brought by the Australian Social Welfare Union was integral to the struggle for bringing employees in the non-government community sectors into the award system. Their exclusion from award coverage had meant that they had some of the poorest working conditions of Australian workers. In 1992 the Australian Social Welfare Union amalgamated with the Australian Services Union [ASU], and members of the Australian Social Welfare Union now form part of the SACS industry division of the Australian Services Union. The Australian Services Union continues to fight for the rights of workers in the non-government community services sector. The community services sector still faces a range of new challenges-an increased demand for services and a workforce characterised by ageing workers, significant competition between public sector and community sector jobs, coupled with wage disparity between the two sectors. I am proud to be a member of a union forged by the hard work of those women and men of the Australian Social Welfare Union who had the audacity to say, "Yes, we can."