With the Federal Government making its submission to the Fair Work Commission (FWC), a number of events still need to take place before any decision on a pay rise is announced for the dedicated 356,000 workers in residential and in-home care.
A Full Bench of the FWC will hold public hearings in its Melbourne office on 24 and 25 August, with further hearings in its Sydney office on 1 and 2 September.
After that, we may be nearer a date for a decision. To think the Australian Workers Union lodged the case to vary the Aged Care Award in April 2021 – 16 months ago.
Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells said on Tuesday, after the government’s submission to the FWC was lodged 24 hours earlier, that any debate on the pay rise is “hypothetical”.
“You might remember that the community workers case back during the Rudd-Gillard Government years that gave a significant pay rise to our community workers was stepped out across nine years. So, the sequencing around that, there’s lots more work to do, and yes, we’re preparing, I guess, for all eventualities, but until we have the figure from the Commissioner, and what figure he’s attributing to different sections of the aged care workforce, it’s all hypothetical,” she said.
Paul Sadler, the Interim CEO of the sector’s peak body Aged and Community Care Providers Association, said the case for a pay rise was strongest for registered and enrolled nurses and personal care workers.
“It would not surprise me to see that the increase for these key workers will be certainly up towards that 25 per cent level,” he said.
“The sooner this decision is made the better, but we do support a staged implementation of the increase.”
Lifting the pay of aged care workers was a key recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety’s final report last year.
As DCM Group CEO Chris Baynes wrote in an Opinion article in The SOURCE yesterday, the Federal Government is actually agreeing to pay for the “base” cost increase, which is the wage itself. Care operators will have to find the money to cover the on-costs.
Grant Corderoy, Senior Partner at accountancy firm StewartBrown, said the on-costs will be about 25% – or $1 billion if 25% is awarded – on top of the wage, and includes the super increase, workers compensation, loadings and payroll tax for private operators.
Whether the aged care workers will get what they deserve remains unclear.
