Safe Staff, Safe Venues
Hospitality is the backbone of Victoria's social and cultural life. It's also one of the most exploitative industries in the country. For the people who keep it running, casualisation, wage theft and gender-based violence are the norm. Our project exists to change that.
The Safe Staff, Safe Venues project is a worker-driven project addressing these systemic issues to create safe and reliable events and hospitality workplaces.
It's time for industry change, and you can be part of it.
Sign up at the top of this page to be kept up to date about upcoming free training, events and hospo catch ups.
How we support hospo and events workers
We bring events and hospo workers together to share their experiences, build their knowledge of their rights, and act collectively to make work safer, fairer and more respectful. Change comes when workers stand together.
Here are four ways to be part of it.
1. We organise free workshops
These short and practical sessions will help you understand your rights and build your voice at work.
2. We provide a safe space for hospo chats
These sessions are for workers to talk about what's really happening at work: what you like, what needs to change, and how we can act collectively to make it happen.
3. We help connect you to support
Our organisers can help you to access support through your union and other organisations if you want to. Send an email to [email protected] and connect with the team
4. We run research & advocate for workers
We document what's really happening in the industry and bring those findings to government, employers and the public, so workers' voices drive the changes that follow.
Read our report: Our Passion, our profession and our livelihood: Building secure, safe and equal hospitality
Share your experience as an hospo workerEverything on this page is built on what workers themselves are telling us about their daily reality. Over 8 months, we visited more than 1,000 venues, ran on-the-ground conversations with hundreds of workers, and gathered 600+ survey responses across Victoria. What we heard shapes everything we do. The workshops we run, the demands we make of government and the way we organise.
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Our demands to government
All workers are entitled to a safe workplace, and all employers have a duty to create and maintain them. They need to be held accountable if they don’t do so.
We’re asking the government to:
• Hold licence holders accountable when they fail to prevent or address violence, including suspension and revocation of their licence
• Introduce a dedicated safety framework for high-risk venues, built with workers at the table
• Make reporting simpler and safer, especially for casual workers, visa holders and workers with language barriers
Workplaces for Women: Safe Staff, Safe Venues is supported by the Victorian government