Konstantinos Manolopoulos has been cleaning schools for 25 years. For the past three, he has cleaned the middle campus at Mill Park secondary college, just a few kilometres from his home in the Melbourne suburb of Epping. But he is approaching the Christmas break with no job to return to in the new year.
Manolopoulos is one of about 700 school cleaners, at more than 200 schools, who are affected by a major contract changeover between cleaning companies and the Victorian government. Manolopoulos was told a couple of months ago that his job would wind up on 20 December when the government’s contract with ISS comes to an end. ISS has managed the cleaning of public schools in Melbourne’s west and north-east since 2018.
Cleaning of those schools will be taken over by the facilities companies Serco and Tradeflex. The latter will pick up the middle campus at Mill Park secondary. All staff have been forced to reapply for their jobs, with no guarantee they will get them back.
“I’m very disappointed,” Manolopoulos told Guardian Australia. “I’m really unhappy, depressed, because I don’t have a job. What’s going to happen later? I’m lucky I have my house.”
About six weeks ago, Manolopoulos said, Tradeflex arranged an information meeting with him. After that meeting he emailed to reapply for his job. When he didn’t hear anything back for weeks, he called the office.
“I said to them, I’ve been to the meeting and I haven’t heard anything yet from your company,” he said. “One of the ladies, she doesn’t even let me talk, starts [saying] ‘we are not going to offer you any job’.”
Despite this, Manolopoulos emailed Tradeflex again. A couple of weeks later, he received a pro-forma response from its HR department, saying they were “diligently reviewing all applications” and he would be contacted as soon as possible. At the time of writing, he had not received a response.
A spokesperson for Tradeflex said it was “untrue” that Manolopoulos had been told he would not be rehired.
Tradeflex had “actively reached out to ISS employees to offer the opportunity to meet and discuss working with Tradeflex, express interest in available roles, and to attend one of a number of live job conferences”, the spokesperson said. They said the company would be offering successful candidates permanent full time or part time work and was “expecting to engage over 220 existing ISS employees”.
“This is a broken system,” said Linda Revill, a property services coordinator at the United Workers Union, which represents cleaners. “The race-to-the-bottom mentality of major contractors like Tradeflex and Serco treats workers like Konstantinos as a number that can be thrown on the scrap heap.”
Even if Manolopoulos were successful in reapplying for his job, it is likely the employment conditions for him and many others will be quite different.
Under ISS, which had negotiated an enterprise bargaining agreement with the union, level one cleaners who worked full-time were paid for 52 weeks of the year – that is, including school holidays – and earned $47,562 per annum. A level two earned $51,997. If they were in charge of other staff, in what’s called a leading hand position, they received an extra $2,854 a year.
The precise terms on which the two new contractors would employ staff has not been confirmed, but Serco has told the UWU that they will not be paying staff for school holiday periods. That equates to the loss of eights weeks’ pay per year.
Serco has also indicated it would be knocking all level two and leading hand staff back to level one, resulting in some full-time staff facing the cumulative loss of more than $11,000 per annum – assuming they retained full-time hours, which the union believes is unlikely.
A spokesperson for Serco said: “It would not be appropriate for Serco to comment on this matter at this time.”
A spokesperson for Tradeflex told Guardian Australia it expected to employ cleaners across “a combination of level one, two and three positions” under the award. The company was “proudly committed to employment practices that are fair and inclusive,” the spokesperson said, adding that workers over 60 made up approximately 10% of its total workforce.
The UWU believes the fairest solution would be for cleaners to be directly employed by the government, rather than by a contractor. A committee the Victorian government charged with reviewing the school cleaning contract arrangements earlier this year also recommended direct employment, the union understands. Those recommendations, however, have not been made public.
Revill has called on the government to ensure the workers have secure jobs.
“Despite the completion of the review, workers are still saddled with a system where their jobs are only as safe as the next contract, and any above-award wage increases won can be disregarded by replacement contractors,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Victorian Department of Education and Training said in a statement: “We are facilitating the transition and actively working with the service providers to ensure a smooth process for schools and cleaning staff, with incoming arrangements to be in place until late December 2024. The Victorian government is exploring opportunities to further strengthen the delivery of cleaning services in government schools.”
Manolopoulos said he felt at home where he was.
“I like the school. I say hello to the teachers, to the kids. They say how am I, how is my day. I say the same, you know?”
He believed his age may strike him off his would-be employer’s list. “I am only 66, but I’m very energetic,” Manolopoulos said. Despite being eligible for it, he’s not interested in retirement.
“No way. In my 70s, yes. Not now.”
