SWAN Ireland support Young Workers Network event “Take a Stand Against Bad Bosses”

 

This interactive workshop will examine the ongoing issues of zero hour contracts, low pay and precarious work, effecting young workers in Ireland and will strategise how young workers and those who support them can take a stand against these injustices.

As a group currently being targeted by a proposed “graduate scheme” through the Child and Family Agency, newly qualified social workers can particularly empathise with the need for this workshop. We are strongly opposed to this graduate scheme (and other exploitative schemes like Gateway and JobBridge) in that;

  1. It represents a move to ‘drive down’ salaries within the social work sector and would put in place a new layer of ‘cheap labour’ within the profession.
  2. It will prompt other social work employers to also reduce starting salaries for newly qualified social work professionals.
  3. It is seeking to undermine the terms of condition of employment negotiated by our trade unions.
  4. It will prompt many newly qualified social workers to emigrate.

These issues echo the main themes identified for discussion at the upcoming Young Workers Network workshop. We therefore encourage as many Social Work Action Network Ireland members as possible, to attend the workshop and to begin to strategise with other youth groups, to build alliances, build solidarity and build ideas for collective actions and responses to these common issues effecting us all.

Venue: Liberty Hall, Eden Quay, Dublin 1.

Time: 12pm-4pm, Saturday 19th of April.

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We want to develop a network of service users, practicitioners, academics and students to support radical and progressive social work. We need a social work that is ready to challenge oppressive practice, that means working collectively across the country and internationally to advance Social Work.