School cleaners stoppages to start

" Bob Carr doesn't just want your taxes to help his Budget, he now wants parents and teachers to volunteer their labour to help stretch the State Budget."

School cleaners from nearly more than 160 school sites will join the stoppage tomorrow.

Cleaners from the Bankstown area will rally afterwards outside the office of State Labor MP Anthony Stewart in Chapel Rd, Bankstown at 10 am. Another rally, at the same time, will take place outside the office of State Labor MP Karen Paluzzano in Penrith .

Cleaning schools for twenty years - and part of the family

" I love the job. I've worked at the school 20 years, because I think the students and the teachers are worth it. It's a job that I've put my heart into," Lyn Young says.

Lyn explains the school principal has often introduced her to visiting dignitaries as an important part of the school family.

" And I am family. My children are grown up and off at university. When they were in primary school I was a cleaner at that school. Then I went off to work, here at the high school, after they went on to high school.

" I wouldn't want less than decent conditions for my kids - or my neighbours' kids. My blood boils at what Bob Carr wants to do."

Lyn Young says she regards her work as the most important job in the world - looking after the health and hygiene of students and teachers at East Hills Girls High School.

" The changes to the contracts from next year will either mean I do not have a job or I'll have my hours cut back so badly that I'll lose almost all of my wages."

Many of the cleaners are older women who came out to Australia as immigrants looking for the better opportunities that Australia offered.

" We've got little hope of finding other employment if Bob Carr goes ahead with this plan. I didn't believe in my wildest dreams they'd do things like this here in Australia," Lyn Young said.

"People work their whole life, work decently and honestly and hard and then this happens - and it comes from a Labor government which is meant to be on the side of working people."

The LHMU proudly represents around 130,000 hard working women and men throughout Australia

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