4 August 2021
Better wages for aged care nurses and personal carers
Government ‘hands off’ response renders Royal Commission
recommendation pure ‘pie in the sky’
Perhaps naively, the Royal Commissioners recommended that the Government collaborate with employers (providers) and unions to seek wage increases before the Fair Work Commission. The Government’s strictly ‘hands off’ response renders that recommendation pure ‘pie in the sky’.
In choosing to do nothing, the Morrison government is guilty of another form of aged care neglect. The decision is extraordinary given the compelling widely accepted case for improving the relative wages of carers and nurses in aged care.
In the case of nursing homes and care at home, the Government is the effective employer as it funds about 70 per cent of the operating costs of the businesses which provide aged care services.
The shameful limit of Government involvement to date is a commitment to provide certain data held by the bureaucracy. It is always open to governments at the very least to make submissions to a tribunal, if not to negotiate. The comprehensive ‘hands off’ approach here will lengthen the case and it makes a mockery of the Government’s touted concern for the advancement of women.
The case before the tribunal will be based on changes in work value and equal pay principles and it will be lengthy. Current scheduling extends hearings to April 2022 and possibly beyond and after that the Fair Work Commission adjourns for an unknown period of time to consider its decision.
This unsatisfactory situation could benefit from a particular form of arbitration known as ‘final offer’ arbitration. Here the arbitrator (the tribunal) is limited to choosing either the unions’ final demand or the employers’ final offer instead of any point between the two. Fear of a bad outcome encourages each of the parties to either negotiate or at least to move to a reasonable position. Regrettably the process is not available despite being well suited to a case of a gross power imbalance which sadly, is true for aged care.