Lynne Davies is among four female cleaners aged in their 50s who will be sacked this week without any redundancy pay and offered job opportunities as far away as New Zealand.
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The closest job vacancy listed by cleaning company Spotless, which will sack the women on Wednesday, is a casual position in Nowra, an hour's drive away from where they live in Wollongong. The women who have full-time jobs said the Nowra job offered too few hours, negating the travel time and cost.
Most of the job vacancies Spotless listed are in New Zealand and in fields unrelated to cleaning.
Ms Davies, 58, who has worked for Spotless for 14 years said she loved her job and was "disgusted" with the way the company had terminated her job without providing any redundancy pay. She was too young to retire and said she would find it "tough" to get another job.
Helen Hammond, 56, who works with Ms Davies at an aged care facility has also worked for Spotless for 14 years and said she needed to keep working.
Panayota Tzolakidis said job vacancies offered by Spotless were not suitable.
"I'm not an electrician," she said. "I've been working for 30 years as a cleaner. I've still got bills to pay."
A spokeswoman for Spotless said it was lawful and common practice for the company to terminate employment at the end of a contract.
"Spotless’ view is that it can rely on the [ordinary and customary turnover of labour] exception to redundancy pay when employees lose their jobs due to the end of the client contract," she said.
"Our business model involves employing staff to service particular commercial contracts and it is the common practice of Spotless to terminate the employment of employees when a contract ends (other than where those employees can be redeployed)."
The spokeswoman said the company tries to redeploy staff where possible.
"Spotless provides all of our people whose roles are finishing, with the full list of job vacancies in our organisation across Australia and New Zealand," she said.
"We do not make assumptions about what types of roles or locations an employee may be interested in."
Under section 119 of the Fair Work Act 2009, an employee is entitled to redundancy pay if their position is terminated where the employer no longer requires the job to be done, "except where this is due to the ordinary and customary turnover of labour".
UTS labour law lecturer Michael Rawling said the Fair Work Act allows for the reduction of redundancy pay, even down to nil, where an employer obtains other acceptable employment for workers.
"The matters that will be considered include whether there are similar terms and conditions at work and the location of the alternative employment is not unreasonably distant," Dr Rawling said.
Health Services Union NSW Secretary Gerard Hayes said of 270 jobs on the Spotless redeployment list, 69 are in New Zealand.
"Between them, these four workers have spent 45 years with Spotless. To simply show them the door, with no redundancy pay, is heartless and immoral," he said.
"To claim that giving a Wollongong-based cleaner in Wollongong the option of applying for a job in New Zealand is somehow a genuine redeployment opportunity is clearly ridiculous.
"The fact that Spotless seem to be getting away with it also shows that there is something wrong with our workplace laws."
Move to lift standards
Corporations who want to avoid damage to their reputations through association with the exploitation of cleaners in their supply chains are supporting a new initiative that promotes responsible contracting.
The Cleaning Accountability Framework is made up of representatives from across the cleaning supply chain. Its members include National Australia Bank, AMP Capital, ISPT, Charter Hall, CBRE, BIC Services, JLL, Australian Super, Dexus Property group, Assetlink, ISS Facility Services, Millennium Hi-tech Group, the union United Voice and the Fair Work Ombudsman.
The initiative, which is in a pilot phase, aims to support fair standards of pay and conditions for cleaners using an accreditation scheme that encourages responsible contracting.
Sarah Kaine, from the University of Technology Business School is part of a research team that is helping develop the accountability framework and study its effectiveness.
"We have all parties of the supply chain sitting down at the table and figuring out how to deal with labour standards in cleaning," she said.
Dr Kaine said a key motivator for companies was a desire to avoid reputational risk.
"There is also a genuine concern on the part of some organisations that they really don't like ... seeing workers who clean their offices who aren't treated in the same way they would expect their workers to be treated," Dr Kaine said.
