Message from Ability Works Australia

This is a message from the Ability Works Australia Employee Representative Committee:

• Work is very important to all employees at Ability Works.
• It would be very hard to find work and hold that job if we could not continue to work at Ability Works.
• Working at Ability Works provides us with a strong sense of community.
• There would not be enough support available to us in open employment and because of this we could not cope with the jobs outside of supported employment.
• Not having work would be devastating for us – there would be nothing to do all day.
• We feel that organisations like Ability works, who have been told they must make a transition to another wage assessment tool by late April 2015, need more than the 12 months that was provided by the Human Rights Commission. We would say at least two years is required.
• The transition time should be sufficient to allow Ability Works to adjust and implement its costing approach and work with its customer base to ensure it could sustain probable wage cost increases under a new wage assessment model.
• Funding from Government needs to be sufficient to cover the true cost of providing support to employees.
• We would like to see clear and definitive commitment from Government (and the Opposition) in regard to securing our long term employment future.
• We feel that the public at large do not have a clear understanding of our work environment and the level of commitment from employees.
• All employees have a sense of pride in our work – ensuring that customers receive work of acceptable quality.
• We want to state clearly and strongly that continuity of employment is of paramount importance to employees at Ability Works.