Policy Officer

Description:

• Working with the peak body for the Australian union movement, developing and delivering the ACTU’s policy, research, advocacy, and campaign work with respect to work health and safety and workers’ compensation.
• Full-time or part-time opportunity.
• The ACTU is an organisation that respects cultural and social diversity within the workforce and the community. Women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and people of colour are especially encouraged to apply.

Our Organisation

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is the peak union body representing almost 2 million workers and their families.

Since our creation in 1927, the ACTU has spearheaded some of the most fundamental workplace struggles in Australia’s history including leading our movement’s efforts to ensure every work has the right to safe and healthy work.

The ACTU’s role as a peak body is to encourage workers to join their union, be a national voice for our movement, and advance and defend workers’ rights by co-ordinating union campaigns, representing workers at a range of government and non-government forums and to provide industrial, policy and other support to our affiliates.

The Role

The right to a safe and healthy working environment is a fundamental human right and essential to decent work. Despite this many workers in Australia are engaged in unhealthy and unsafe work. Every year more than 200 are killed in workplace incidents, a further 5,000 die from diseases caused by exposures at work and a staggering 120,000 are seriously injured at work.

The ACTU, working with our affiliates is committed to advocating and campaigning for better workplace laws to protect and improve workers’ health and wellbeing. The ACTU is also committed to improving the capacity of affiliates to campaign and organise for safer and healthier work.

Working with affiliates, trades and labour councils as well as key external stakeholders, this role has responsibility for planning, delivery and coordination of the ACTU’s health and safety and workers’ compensation policy and advocacy program.

Key responsibilities

• Providing policy support to the ACTU in relation to work health and safety and broader industrial relations matters.
• Consulting affiliates and consolidating responses in relation to policy matters for consideration at Safe Work Australia.
• The development of organising and political campaigns that advance the objectives of the ACTU with respect to health and safety, via best-practice communications using contemporary member engagement tools across a range of channels: email, website, and social media.
• Working collaboratively with organising staff and affiliates to develop and implement campaigns which build communities of support to change perceptions.
• Management of governance/reporting processes.
• Liaise with relevant media, graphic design, and other providers to produce materials for training, campaigns, recruitment, and member engagement.