ISS Facility Services has pledged more than 1,000 jobs for First Australians through a partnership with the Australian Government that was officially launched 23 July.
Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion, held a press conference at the Charles Perkins Centre (CPC), Sydney University, to announce the partnership. The event was also attended by CPC CEO Michael Milne; cultural representative Uncle Allen Madden; Dane Hudson, CEO of ISS Australia and New Zealand; and other VIPs.
The partnership is part of the Commonwealth’s new Employment Parity Initiative. It ‘harnesses the goodwill of Australia’s largest employers to hire Indigenous employees to help them increase their Indigenous workforce to 3 percent employment parity, getting 20,000 more First Australians into private sector jobs by 2020.’
At the event ISS launched its first ever Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP).
“This document is our formal commitment to Indigenous Australians and provides stretch targets for our business across the key areas of relationships, respect and opportunities,” stated Hudson.
“First Australian peoples play an important part in our business, as you can see here today, we employ people from the centre of Sydney, to the airport in Brisbane, through to remote regions in the Pilbara. We value the skills they bring and treat them with respect, as we do all of our 13,000 employees here in Australia.”
The RAP document was produced for ISS by Kaarunga Media and Impact Media, two Aboriginal-owned businesses in WA. As part of the project, ISS also commissioned Palyku artist Sally Morgan to create a painting that symbolised the ISS Reconciliation values. Each of these elements pictured, represents a part ISS’ indigenous engagement journey, commitments and activities to date.