Students Against Placement Poverty held a national launch on the 12th via zoom. Close to 50 students and staff attended from a number of campuses across the country including QUT, UniSC, UTAS, WSU and more.
Initially launched in 2020, the Students Against Placement Poverty (SAPP) campaign was revived this year as a grassroots, student-led response to the dearth of support for students on mandatory unpaid placements across degrees in Social Work, Education, Nursing, Engineering and more.
Exacerbated by current cost of living pressures and changes to HECS indexation, SAPP member Grayson Smith chaired the forum and spoke to the exploitative mental and physical toll unpaid placements have on working students.
“I crunched the numbers… I have a month left to go of my final placement, and have been doing this for 93 days, which means I have gone 93 days without taking a day off. I work seven days a week, Monday to Friday from 8:30-4:30 at my placement out in Western Sydney, and work weekends and Monday night at a pub doing quite physical labour.”
“I can’t take a day off… because taking a day off work means that you don’t get to pay the rent. My relationships have suffered, my mental and physical health has suffered… you don’t have time to cook or to clean your spaces…”
Professor Christine Morley, Head of the Social Work and Human Services Disciplines within the School of Public Health and Social Work at QUT, expanded on findings from the 1200 respondents to the Australian Council of Heads of School of Social Work-commissioned survey she headed.
“With inflation the way it is, and the cost of living, and the pressures upon students, the impost of doing a 1000 hours is just completely untenable for students… and with the world that we are creating, we need students at the very least to be subsidised or financially supported by government.”
Morley pointed to the relaxation of AASW placement regulations during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as an indication of what is possible for regulatory bodies right now, especially as they relate to minor changes around being able to complete placement in students’ existing workplace.
The survey also found that more than a third of students had lost their entire weekly income due to unpaid placement, while an additional 25% had lost around 75% of their regular income. 96% of respondents said they couldn’t afford food or the uniforms and travel required to complete placement, something Morley described as having a profound effect on the ability for students to practice safely whilst on placement, especially when they are often expected to make up for professional labour shortages felt in nursing, social work and other industries.
Aarogya Pokhrel, a Nepalese international student completing a masters in social work at WSU, described feeling like he was “filling in for employees” without having the framework and support from placement agencies to apply learnt theory with feedback. He also pointed to the exclusion of international students from government support and the imposition of fees exceeding 3.5 times those paid by domestic students.
SAPP argues that unpaid placements not only exploit student labor but also violate the codes of ethics of both social work and teaching professions, such as those set out by the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW). These state that social workers should maintain “acceptable working conditions” (7.2.6) and that professional relationships between social workers and students on placement should be “constructive and non-exploitative” (9.1.5).
Despite these ethical standards, the AASW requires that all social work students in Australia complete 1000 hours of unpaid work, often alongside study and regular employment. This is not unique to social work students either, with standards authorities like NESA and Engineers Australia requiring upwards of 500 hours of unpaid work to complete their respective degrees.
Since the successful in-person campaign launch at the University of Sydney last month, the SAPP campaign has amassed over 600 signatures from students and staff via their open letter demanding students be paid at or above the minimum wage by either Universities or relevant agencies. Support has ranged from Greens Senators Mehreen Faruqi and Penny Allman-Payne, Unions NSW, members of the National Union of Students and more.
The forum wrapped up after an hour and a half of discussion, leaving student activists across the country with campaign ideas ranging from involvement in student media to flyering hospitals and other placement sites. Keep up with the campaign by joining the mailing list here, and sign the open letter to get involved and build the fight to win paid placements.