SACS: Social & Community Services

	ASU SACS representatives meeting Julia Gillard (centre, top photo) and Senator Anne McEwen (centre, orange shirt, lower photo)

SACS delegates take issues to Canberra

By ASU - the social and community services (SACS) industry union

This past September, during the last sitting of Federal Parliament in Canberra, ASU National and Branch officials and Social and Community Services (SACS) delegates from NSW, ACT, Victoria, South Australia and Northern Territory went to Canberra to visit key politicians to discuss the ASU's concerns about wages, training and career paths for our members and funding of this vital industry.

This visit follows on from the ASU's launch of a discussion paper in April 2007, "Building Social Inclusion in Australia - priorities for the Social and Community Sector workforce". You can read about the launch and the discussion paper (which you can also download) here: http://www.asu.asn.au/media/sacs/20070504_socialinclusion.html

We saw over 20 politicians, including all the relevant Shadow Ministers whose portfolios touch the community sector workforce.

We shared with them the preliminary results of our recent survey of 2,188 SACS workers across the country and also the result of consultations with ASU members since the launch of our discussion paper.

Very soon we will publicly release the results of our survey (which is one of the largest of the SACS workforce) and also launch our recommendations document following on from our work this year. Watch out for more details soon.