Help Disabled Australians Advocate for Fair Pay!

Shaun Bickley is organizing this fundraiser.

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Hi, my name is Shaun, an Autistic person with a brain injury living in Queensland. I'm also the President & Founder of Our Fair Go, a Disabled People's Organisation (DPO) focused on fair pay and against modern slavery for disabled people. A DPO is an organisation whose Board and membership (and sometimes staff) is at least 51% disabled people--ours is 100%.

In Australia, there are 17,000 disabled people working in sheltered workshops (also called Australian Disability Enterprises or ADEs) where they can be paid $3.12/hr. Disabled people in prison can be paid even less, and disabled people on a program called Work for the Dole work for free on exchange for keeping their benefits.

Besides the low pay, the United Nations and academics in Australia have called this modern slavery, as the people in these environments don't have agency or information about their options. They violate the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the International Labour Organisation Convention 29 on Forced Labour (ILO Convention 29), and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery recommended their abolition.

I decided to take action and formed a public company (to be a charity once we have support to complete the application), Our Fair Go. We have 54 disabled members and 20 non-voting supporting members (mostly family and disability professionals). But we're not just here to look pretty.

Because the federal government won't act (and has in fact been expanding modern slavery for disabled people), we've focused on the local level. In the last year, we have gotten the Town of Victoria Park, WA to ban procurement from ADEs and the City of Sydney to ban procurement or support from /any/ business that pays less than the national minimum wage. We have presented at multiple conferences including Disability Pride, where we tabled and educated the community. We are actively advocating and giving public comment at three more Councils right now.

We've done all this without the hundreds of millions of dollars and bought politicians our opponents in the ADE industry have at their disposal. In fact, to ensure that every disabled person can participate, we ask only $1/year in dues from our disabled members, which has left us with very little for operational funds.

(GFM takes out 2.9% + 30 cents for each donation. All goals include a 2.9% fee as an estimate).

We are currently finishing our inaugural Board elections. To accommodate Deaf and neurodivergent members, we need to purchase a year's subscription to Zoom for $267.36--this is $275.11 after fees. Once we secure this, we can schedule our AGM and 1st Board meeting.

We are purchasing professional indemnity & public liability insurance for $366.20 ($376.82). This is standard coverage for Boards to protect us from frivolous lawsuits. It's especially important as all our Board members are vulnerable people and keeps us safe from retaliation as we advocate.

In January, we will owe $71.35 ($73.42) for our webhost and email and $79.20 ($81.50) for a year of Wordpress.

Additionally, we will need $250.48 ($257.74) to raise our bank account to $500. We think this is the minimum needed to give us some stability and cover other operational costs like insurance, Auslan, printing and shipping of supplies.

This brings us to $1034.59, or $1064.59 (after fees) for our fundraiser, with a first goal of $275.11. I'm confident our communities will support us to raise these funds.

We've accomplished a lot in our first 7 months as an organisation (and informal volunteer work before). With just some basic infrastructure for Zoom, a website, and email, we can do so much more.