They're sick of low pay

Calling on others to join the fight for equal pay for women are (clockwise, from centre front) Naomi Worrall, from the Community Housing Association; disability worker Jo Groves; Angela Pollard, from the Northern Rivers Community Legal Centre; and Maralyn Schofield, from the Tenants Advice and Advocacy Service. Jacklyn Wagner

LISMORE disability support worker Jo Groves earns just a few dollars above the minimum wage, yet her vital role saves the State a fortune by keeping vulnerable citizens out of expensive institutional care.

Her responsibilities include the dispensing of critical medications that would require two nurses to sign-off on in a hospital.

Ms Groves and 2000 of her colleagues on the Northern Rivers represent the forgotten sector of community service workers who hold together a system straining under the pressure of a cash-strapped State Government, a national mental health epidemic and an ever-widening gap between the rich and poor.

The sector's workforce comprises 87 per cent women, who represent the core of the Australian Services' Union.

ASU organisers are in Canberra today calling the Federal Government's bluff after it stalled on its fair pay promise last week, citing budgetary constraints.

The union is running the first test case on equal pay under the Fair Work Act, seeking increased pay for women in the social and community services sector, and has threatened to call a national strike on December 15, with another three majorunions indicating support.

Local community service workers and ASU delegates Maralyn Schofield and Naomi Worrall are sounding the war cry and calling for concerted local industrial action and support.

“As a sector we don't usually take strike action, but we haven't seen this sort of thing since the sixties and seventies and it is time we stood together for what is rightfully ours,” Ms Schofield said.

Northern Rivers Community Legal Centre manager Angela Pollard said the sector had lost countless salary increases since the mid-1990s. While angry at the situation, she acknowledged the Labor Party's role in at least getting the legislation on the table.

“Julia Gillard and Penny Wong have spent their entire lives working for social justice,” Ms Pollard said. “But now they're at the pointy end of government our job is to continue to apply the pressure so they can take the rest of their Cabinet colleagues with them.”