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Winter 2006

Long-term Member Retires

Long-time HACSU member, Ann Morris, recalls some of the changes she’s seen in the workforce.

Ann Morris has worked in public sector administration for the last forty years. She began her working life in the Branch Office of Veterans Affairs in the typing pool. More recently, Ann has been the first face to be seen as you enter the Whittle Ward Palliative Care Unit. She has been a HACSU member for the last 20 years.

Ann retired at the end of June. She intends to spend lots of time in the garden in her retirement and hopes to travel.

Over the years, Ann has seen many changes to the workforce. The main changes that she has noticed are the increasing use of technology, a more relaxed dress code and increasing gender equity in the workplace.

"I remember using an old manual type writer and cutting a stencil and inking up a Gestetner machine to make copies by hand." Ann says that "technology has made record keeping much simpler and it's easier now to make changes to records."

Ann recalls a different time when she began her working life. "When I first started I wasn't allowed to wear trousers, or wear shoes with my toes showing, and the men had to wear jackets to work. We also had to wear hats and gloves to and from work. There is more freedom these days to wear what you like."

"It was also a very male dominated work situation when I started. All the men had the top jobs and women just had menial, clerical jobs. Now you have female Deputy Commissioners, no women held top jobs then."

And the gender gap did not end at the glass ceiling, "When I first started work married women were taken off the permanent list and women were looked down on and not really classed as people with brains."

Ann believes that the changes in the workforce have also been accompanied by more general improvements. "I've also seen the standard of care improve a lot for patients, for example, palliative care is more accepted now."

"I will really miss the Whittle Ward. I've loved it here. We're like a big family really. A lot of the nurses came to work here as single girls and have married and had families and I've seen them through all those changes."

But Ann fears that these improvements may be threatened. "I see the new Industrial Relations legislation as a backwards step. People have gone without and worked hard for their rights and now some of those rights might be lost."

HACSU wishes Ann well in her retirement and thanks her for her long-running support.