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Winter 2006

Eileen recalls close to 40 years of work

Eileen Lohrey has worked as an extended care assistant (ECA) for St Giles for 39 years. She was one of the original HACSU members at the Launceston disability respite centre.

"We used to close for school holidays and we were put off without pay for the duration, so we decided to join the union. As part of joining we, with the help of HACSU industrial officer David Rees (now retired), resolved the issue and St Giles stopped closing over public and school holidays," Eileen recalls.

"When I first started, we had physios but no speech therapist, we had to help the kids do a lot of the physio exercises ourselves. It was all physically handicapped children, no mentally handicapped, and they were from all over the state. We had them on weekends and they went to Brownies, Scouts and Guides. These days it's a business, and it's respite care not permanent care with children only staying a couple of days or weeks at a time."

"We also used to go on school camps. I remember going down the back of Latrobe in the bush and we went to Melbourne once and took the children to the zoo and shopping."

Eileen was expecting to retire around the end of the year to care for her elderly mother, so when her employer attempted to transfer her to another worksite Eileen approached the union to help her negotiate an early retirement package.

"I'm quite happy," Eileen said, "It's allowed me to go early and it was preferable to moving to a new worksite."

Eileen has also recently become involved in the Your Rights at Work campaign.

"A friend of mine asked me to go to the march through Launceston and I said 'Why not!' It was the first protest march I'd ever been on. I enjoyed the day, it was quite different."

"I'm worried about workers losing penalty rates under the new laws. I did about four years of night duty, on my own with up to 40 children, and 10 hour shifts 4 days a week. It's really only the penalty rates that make that worthwhile."