Children at a notorious youth detention facility have been restricted to their rooms as staff went on strike for safer working conditions following a violent escape.
Workers at the Ashley Youth Detention Centre at Deloraine, in Tasmania's north, joined a stop-work action for two hours on Tuesday afternoon.
The Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) organised the strike, citing unsafe working conditions due to understaffing and outdated facilities.
"Staff are under immense pressure in an unsafe working environment, working short-staffed nearly every single day," HACSU state secretary Robbie Moore told AAP.
"Management just turns a blind eye and ignores their serious concerns."
Mr Moore said an escape by six teenagers from the facility in December exposed longstanding staffing and resourcing challenges.
Three staff members were assaulted during the incident, leaving one with facial injuries and a stab wound to the hand.
"That incident got a lot of media attention but the reality is there are regular near misses," Mr Moore said.
"There are regular assaults on other staff and other children."
He added that it was his understanding young people within the facility would be confined to their rooms during the strike.
Tasmania's Children and Youth Minister Jo Palmer said the strike was "incredibly disappointing," adding the government had been engaging with the unions in good faith.
"My very clear focus is on the safety of staff who have chosen not to be involved in this, who will continue working, and also the young people at Ashley," she told reporters on Tuesday.
AAP understands the Department for Education, Children and Young People invited the union to a meeting before the strike was announced.
Workers are also pushing for higher wages and demanding job protections as the centre prepares to relocate to the state's south.
The Deloraine centre is slated to shut its doors by 2028 after an inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse called for its closure in 2022.
It found some children and young people experienced "systematic harm and abuse" at the facility stretching back decades.
"Our analysis of Ashley Youth Detention Centre is a cautionary tale for all youth justice facilities of the risks of tolerating the deterioration of respect, care and professionalism towards children and young people," the final report said.
It recommended the facility be closed as soon as possible and a memorial to victim-survivors and replacement facilities be established.
The state government originally planned to close the facility in 2024, before delaying it to 2026 and again to 2028.
Construction of a new facility at Pontville, north of Hobart, is due to be completed in late 2027.
Ashley housed 26 children and young people in 2024, according to TasCOSS, and is the state's sole youth detention centre.
The facility has faced renewed scrutiny since the United Nations criticised it for allegedly keeping children in solitary confinement in a report published last week.
It was listed alongside the Banskia Hill and Don Dale youth detention centres in Western Australia and Northern Territory, respectively, in the international body's five-yearly Universal Periodic Review.
