UNION ACTION
The union Professionals Australia – through its Translators and Interpreters Australia (TIA) group – is the industrial voice of Australian T&I practitioners. TIA’s WA Branch members have made progress recently in their push to defend the state’s T&I practitioners from psychosocial harm in the workplace. They report here.
TIA WA Branch Committee members at the WHS Tribunal (left to right): Khalil Ibrahim Albawy, Heather Glass, Andrew Kozlowski, Akiko Kunita
… no one is going to do it for us.
Interpreters are paid to talk; perhaps it’s a reward for something we like to do anyway! But is anyone listening?
There comes a time when it’s important for us to stop talking and take action. That time is when:
- change is needed
- we accept that doing something is the only way change will happen
- no one is going to do it for us.
In Western Australia recently, TIA members have done something.
In April, through Professionals Australia, we reported the WA Department of Health to WorkSafe WA [the State’s work, health and safety (WHS) regulator].
TIA members in WA meet regularly to share knowledge and concerns. In March, we’d stood witness in the WHS Tribunal in support of our case that the Department has breached the WHS Act. We told the tribunal that every day a WorkSafe WA investigation is delayed is another day that interpreters in WA suffer mental and emotional distress from the psychosocial hazards of interpreting.
Psychosocial hazards are factors in the design or management of work that increase the risk of work-related stress and can lead to psychological or physical harm. Hazards include:
- no briefings or debriefings
- no respect
- the ‘shotgun’ system of job allocation, in which the first recipient of a message to hit ‘accept’ is awarded the job
- demands that we do tasks outside our role
- long assignments – particularly remote interpreting – alone and without breaks
- poor pay
- demands that we work beyond our competence – particularly for sight translation and simultaneous interpreting
- demands that put us at risk of compromising our ethics and therefore our health and safety.
WorkSafe WA is now investigating the Department for exposing interpreters to ongoing psychosocial harm and for failing to protect us from the hazards of insecure work and work-related trauma.
TIA members have been the first to be interviewed, and non-members are also invited to talk to investigators – knowing that what they say will be heard – via TIA [see link in last paragraph].
While the development of codes of ethics and ‘best practice’ standards by professional associations such as AUSIT is necessary and valuable work, we believe that real change – change that gives teeth to those ethics and standards – is only possible if practitioners are also union members.
Union membership is about exercising collective power. In Australia, unions have the expertise and the legal authority to negotiate working conditions – including rates of pay – and the legal capacity to advocate for their members in places like the WHS Tribunal. Importantly, strong union membership can bring about real change, by members standing in solidarity – ‘as union’ – and acting together to make our working lives better.
WorkSafe WA is to report back with findings and recommendations by 15 August 2024, so it’s critical that as many interpreters as possible embrace this opportunity to tell WorkSafe’s investigators about our experiences of psychosocial risk and actual psychosocial harm. To learn more about the psychosocial hazards of interpreting, go to the TIA WHS Hub; and if you have worked, or do work for WA government clients and have a story to tell, email: TIA.
