Cleaners filthy about changes

MORE than 50 Toowoomba school service personnel have met over recent changes to their former frontline status.

Administration officers, technical officers, science operations officers and cleaners are now not considered frontline staff members.

In conjunction with the change, approval to backfill all permanent or temporary regional non-frontline positions now sits with Deputy Director General of Education Queensland Lyn McKenzie, as opposed to school principals.

The news comes after Mr Newman yesterday denied cutting frontline services a day after 200 health jobs were axed from Townsville Hospital and surrounding areas, saying on ABC radio that nurses were also not considered frontline staff.

Together Union lead organiser Dennis Mullins said the change was the first attack on “essential school workers” and feared the change could open the possibility of the rolls to be filled by outsourcing as a cost-cutting measure.

He said the changes were not as drastic to the workers themselves as it was to the future of schoolchildren.

“They (LNP Government) has already started to mouth the agenda today that it will use this as a path to outsource,” he said.

“We’ve got nothing more important than our kids and if you have contractors coming and going at a school, then what sort of quality assurance do you have regarding blue cards and child safety?

“Similarly, if your child injures themselves at school and they go to the front office to get medical attention and that person is not there, who is going to help your child?”