Pharmacy employees are on the frontline of this crisis working to keep the community healthy. This means we are more likely to encounter people who have COVID-19, we are more likely to catch COVID-19 and we are more likely to need to self-isolate on more than one occasion. Professional Pharmacists Australia has filed an application to the Fair Work Commission to have paid pandemic leave entitlements inserted into The Pharmacy Industry Award. These measures will apply to both casual and permanent staff: 1. Where a worker is required to self-isolate, or is prevented from working by government decree, they will receive two weeks paid leave per instance. 2. Where a worker is infected with COVID-19, they receive an immediate credit of 20 days personal leave to take time off. To achieve this, we need the support of the whole pharmacy community. Now is the time for us to unite, we are all in this together.

Special consideration measures, as implemented at other universities throughout Melbourne, help to ensure students feel supported during this unsettling time. All students deserve the right to have their interests looked after, and ensure they do not suffer academically as a result of the altered educational environment.

Private health operators are currently negotiating, or have already negotiated, viability guarantee agreements to assist the public sector and to ensure that workers in the private sector are gainfully employed. NSW Health workers have been guaranteed that they will not have to pay for parking in this time of crisis. The HSU Private Health Division is calling on all private health operators to ensure that free parking for all frontline health workers in this time of crisis. Workers in both private and public health are on the frontline of the fight against coronavirus and should both be afforded the same conditions. It is only fair that private health workers should not have to worry about the additional cost of parking as they work hard to save lives amidst this global pandemic. If you believe that private health workers whose employers have been financially bailed out by the State and Federal Government should not have to pay for parking, then please sign the below petition.

Aurizon Bulk provide critical services to the community by moving goods to supermarkets across Qld. Despite this, Aurizon Bulk Management are behaving like children. They seem to be trying to use the COVID-19 crisis as a means to get an advantage over their workforce. The disputes are over stable rosters, and fatigue - they should be settled right away.

AVM is a big part of the South Australian hospitality and tourism landscape. Our members at Adelaide Convention Centre, Adelaide Entertainment Centre and Coopers Stadium work daily to present and showcase the State of South Australia and everything it has to offer. These venues have skilled and dedicated staff that are crucial to the running of these venues. We cannot afford to lose the knowledge and experience of this workforce. It is crucial that the Marshall Government support workers through the impacts of COVID-19 by extending this wage subsidy to them. The Marshall Government must commit to match the funding provided by the Federal Government for the purposes of the JobKeeper Payment for employees of South Australian public corporations and statutory authorities and ensure that no worker is left behind.

Freight rail workers are keeping Australia moving during this challenging time. They are making sure necessities and raw materials continue to find their way to supermarkets, retail stores, pharmacies, petrol stations, flour mills, manufacturing plants and construction projects. Changes to working conditions affecting rostering can have significant effects on safety and fatigue levels. The other changes could drastically affect people's families with proposals for forced transfer. The Company's attacks on your conditions is creating an unhealthy and increasingly stressful working environment potentially causing employees to take the focus off COVID-19 issues! If Pacific National get away with this, it's a blank cheque for employers in the rail industry to use the current crisis as an excuse to avoid talking with workplace delegates and offcials about critical changes in the workplace.

The cuts being made will save very little money but are part of a misguided drive to continually cut spending in Public Health. One of the cuts takes 4 hours a day of labour from the Clinical Engineering Department, which will reduce the time the staff have to maintain essential equipment such as Defibrillators, Heart Rate Monitors, Ventilators, Oxygen Saturation Meters, Anaesthetics Machines and other essential hospital equipment. There are thousands of these machines at Prince of Wales Hospital. Another cut reduces the number of staff on call of an evening. These staff are called in to assist with urgent heart surgery. They must monitor machines such as Balloon Pumps, that help to increase the blood flow to the heart immediately before and after surgery. This limits their capacity to deal with multiple urgent heart operations of an evening. This will put lives at risk. Stop essential services being run down at this important Public Hospital. Sign the petition now.

Changes to working conditions affecting rostering can have significant effects on safety and fatigue levels. The other changes could drastically affect people's families with proposals for forced transfer. If Pacific National get away with this, it's a blank cheque for employers in the rail industry to use the current crisis as an excuse to avoid talking with workplace delegates and offcials about critical changes in the workplace.

The decision by universities such as MONASH, LATROBE, MELBOURNE and DEAKIN to defund cleaning contracts at this time has resulted in many cleaners being stood down without pay and, as many are international students, without any financial means upon which to survive. Universities receive large amounts of public money and rely on fees from international students such as those who have been stood down, this gives them a social responsibility for the conditions of these workers. Also, there is a continuing need for extra cleaning work to protect university staff from COVID-19. It is shameful that Australian Universities such as MONASH, DEAKIN and LATROBE who rely so heavily on the income they receive from international students have now left those students without any financial resources upon which to survive in this time of crisis.

Over a month ago, union delegates reached out to management in order to begin the process of establishing designated working groups and electing HSRs. Management have refused to speak to us about the formation of Designated Working Groups in order to form an Occupational Health and Safety Committee. As we have notified management on multiple occasions that Victorian safety legislation says that we have the right to elect Health and Safety Representatives (HSR’S). But, as Grant acknowledged in the workplace meeting on the 17/3/20 management have both failed to respond to our request and have outright refused us. This is a clear and very serious breach of the OHS Act which outlines in sections 43-46 that: if one or a group of employees makes a request to be represented by an HSR, then the employer has 14 days to commence the arrangements and do everything reasonable to start these negotiations within this period. In order to protect the health and safety of workers within the workplace and ensure our voices are heard, we elected several HSR’s. As democratically elected HSR’s we put together a list of OHS concerns which you can read here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yLzBD4y_8dwgMhgTSOaEoy4AYGxWN5lf3Rry-ZDijdM/edit?usp=sharing) , we sent this to management via email last week, but they have, once again, failed to respond. We are very disappointed with management's continued refusal to communicate with us and acknowledge our concerns. This shows a clear disregard for the both law and our own health and safety. They are in breach of both our Enterprise Bargaining agreement, which they agreed to follow when they signed it in 2017, and the bare minimum Victorian safety legislation. We Demand that : 1. Management recognises us as democratically elected Health and Safety Representatives and for them to communicate with us directly, both in good faith and as required to do so by law. 2. Begin the negotiation process of Designated Working Groups immediately, in order to ensure that the voices of workers are heard and our health and safety at work is upheld. 3. Uphold the the E.B.A and Victorian safety legislation, this includes reimbursing interviewers for costs associated with setting up working from home, beginning the negotiations of DWG’s and many more things which we outline our letter to management.

UMSU has endorsed the system put in place at Adelaide University where students can see their results and then elect to have a passing grade converted to a non-graded pass which will not count for their WAM. Fails will become withdrawals – again not included in WAM calculations, and results pending can be used when components of courses are postponed to subsequent teaching period. This means that students have a safety net to prevent fails due to extreme circumstances, while maintaining the option of counting good results to their WAM.

These workers pick the fruit and vegetables we eat everyday, they’re in the hospitality industry, they’re delivery drivers and carers, they’re the backbone of our economy. The JobKeeper payment exists to provide a lifeline to those hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis, how can the Morrison Government justify their decision to exclude over 1.1 million migrant workers, temporary visa holders and casuals? The Morrison Government does not address the very real public health crisis that millions of workers are facing. Asking them to ‘go home’ or raid their meagre retirement savings to survive COVID-19 is not only short-sighted, it’s racist. So many of these workers have built lives here and have made Australia their home and with borders closed, these workers have nowhere else to go. The Government must extend income support to all workers. Not doing so risks the entire community’s health and shirks Australia's moral responsibility to look after the wellbeing of all who are here during an unprecedented pandemic. The lack of support for this group of people shows that the Government treats migrants and international students as cash cows. They hire them for cheap labour and ask them to pay huge education fees, but when things get difficult, they wash their hands clean of any responsibility. This pandemic does not discriminate based on visa status or employment status, and neither should we. Everyone deserves to be safe. That's why we need Minister Ruston to ensure a wage subsidy for all workers so that all of us can follow public health advice and stay safe during this crisis.