The Fair Work Commission has this week granted a 3.3 per cent pay rise to award workers, raising the new weekly minimum wage to $694.90 – or $18.29 an hour, from 1 July.
That’s about $22.20 a week – not much when you consider that our aged care workers are some of the lowest-paid workers in our country.
Under the current award rate, minimum pay for personal care workers starts at $715 and goes up to $868 – about 50 per cent of the average national full-time weekly wage of $1,533.
Do our aged care workers deserve more for the valuable work they do? Yes.
But can our providers afford to pay more?
A freeze on funding
Wages are the biggest cost facing providers, making up 60 per cent of their expenses. But many are already struggling to break even.
Last year, the gap between the cost of operating an aged care bed and the daily care fee received by providers blew out to $32 a day, according to aged care accountants StewartBrown – that’s over $11,000 a year per bed.
At the same time, aged care funding has stayed flat with the Federal Government putting an indexation freeze in place for 2017-18. This is not sustainable.
NZ to increase aged care subsidy
Recently we reported here on the historic equal pay deal in New Zealand which will see aged care workers given big pay rises – between 15 and 50 per cent – over the next five years.
It’s a great deal for workers – but most of the funding for the pay increases will come from raising the subsidy for aged care there. Around 20 per cent of aged care residents in NZ are privately-funded so they will also pay more.
The reality is that we need to step up and pay more too. Isn’t it worth it to have a better aged care system for all?
