The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has released a new report, Nowhere to Go, about the lack of adequate bathroom amenities for workers on many sites throughout Australia.
The report exposes unsanitary, unsafe, inaccessible and unsuitable amenities many workers in industry face and how this issue disproportionately impacts women.
It also raises deeper issues of many employers’ outdated attitudes towards women and blue-collar workers in subjecting them to conditions that would never be tolerated in the white-collar world, including:
- no locks on bathroom doors
- locked bathrooms with no available key
- no separate female bathrooms
- toilets away from the work site
- no toilets at all.
Where there are women's bathrooms, some are highly unsatisfactory:
- unclean, unhygienic or rarely cleaned
- have no running water
- have no soap
- have no sanitary bins.
More information: etunational.asn.au/nowhere-to-go/