The Community and Public Sector Union/Civil Service Association (CPSU/CSA) has announced they will offer access to Gender Affirmation Leave for their staff and they encourage other employers to follow suit.
Following internal staff bargaining throughout the last few months, the new CSA Staff Agreement 2022 will now offer employees access to six months of leave, of which four weeks is paid leave, to affirm their gender.
CPSU/CSA Branch Secretary, Rikki Hendon, said this was a welcome inclusion into the CSA Staff Agreement, and that the CPSU/CSA continues to push for positive and progressive change within the union movement and into the workforce more broadly.
“Undergoing gender affirmation procedures, whether it be medical procedures such as surgery or access to hormone replacement therapy or social and legal changes such as birth certificate changes for name or gender, is a time-consuming process for transgender and gender-diverse people.
“LGBTQIA+ rights are union business and we’re proud to be putting our values into action by introducing this new leave entitlement for our staff.
“We also encourage other employers, including but not limited to those in the public sector, to follow suit on such inclusions, and make their own organisations workplaces of choice for the LGBTQIA+ community.
“We want our union to be an employer of choice for the LGBTQIA+ community, and hope this is a positive step forward in that regard. Our union would be happy to assist other organisations, bargaining teams or workplace delegates in drafting and encouraging Gender Affirmation Leave in their agreements.” Hedon said.
The CPSU/CSA is the union for workers in the WA public sector in roles ranging from child protection workers to drivers licensing assessors. It negotiates the pay and conditions of more than 40,000 Western Australians.
In recent years Gender Affirmation leave has been introduced by many leading businesses including Coles, AN, Zurich, ABC, IBM, Accenture, Westpac, and Deakin University, and the Victorian public sector.
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