Tomorrow morning 1500 nurses, health care assistants and support staff employed by the 20 facilities in the Oceania chain of Aged Care Facilities are striking. Some of the residents they care for will join them in the protest.
Caregivers do magnificent work caring for members of our families as they get older and less able to look out for themselves. But they are underpaid and undervalued. I know. I was privileged to be a Rest Homes organiser and advocate before I became an MP and I have nothing but admiration for the work that aged care workers do and the commitment they make.
This isn’t an easy job. Looking after older people in aged care facilities requires skill and intensive responsibility for people with enormous support needs.
There’s been a change from “mum and dad” owned rest homes or Religious and Welfare homes, where older people could have a sedate and dignified retirement, to “ageing in place” where older people stay in their homes with support from Home Support Services. I support this approach, but it means our aged care facilities have been taken by corporate interests, looking to cash in our growing population. Oceania is a private equity firm, whose parent company is Macquarie Global Infrastructure.
While much of New Zealand’s aged care support comes from our health budget - funded by you and me, corporates are shipping off the profits to their overseas shareholders.
I also know how much former Labour Ministers did to try to address the problem of low pay in this burgeoning industry, and how much it was resisted by the industry. They seem to be more interested in discussing their return on investment rather than the terrible state of the workforce and the crises that keep occurring through low-paid workers caring for very vulnerable old people.
Some Oceania workers are paid as little as $13.61 an hour. They shouldn’t have to strike.
But that’s all they can do.
Until the Aged Care workforce unionise themselves, nothing will change. they have no power and no will to unite and force improvements to their work environment including the hourly rate.
@Georgy – these are 1500 union members taking strike action. They are unionising and have been growing in strength.
Why do families trust the care of there parents etc to people who are paid close to the minimum wage.
The wage they are paid implies this is all they are worth and that this is an unskilled low risk low responsibility job.
Im sure most of the staff do teh job for the satisfaction of the job, but you cant feed you children on satisfaction.
Going to be hard to portray these striking workers as lazy, underworked and overpaid like the dockers have been.
“Why do families trust the care of there parents etc to people who are paid close to the minimum wage.
The wage they are paid implies this is all they are worth and that this is an unskilled low risk low responsibility job.”
I hope you never have to clean up crap and piddle for an aged relative, or worse, ever grow old and be reliant on those you dismiss so easily with your faux controversial tone.
“Im sure most of the staff do teh job for the satisfaction of the job, but you cant feed you children on satisfaction.”
Exactly! That’s why they’re on strike – Money to feed their families.
$13.50ph is is well undervalued for the role.
More training. Better qualifications. Better career paths. Better wages. Encourage more younger people, men and women, into the industry. And, set up an SOE to do the job in competition with the private businesses & multinationals. Then let us see what happens. My bet? The public service will do a better, cheaper, more responsive job of it – better for vulnerable elderly and better for the staff.
@A1lens, You lost my point, You would not trust a mechanic on minimum wage to repair your car, or a jeweller on minimum wage to repair an engagement ring, why would you put your parents into the care of a person on minimum wage?
The families who are a main factor into there relatives going into care need to ask the question, ” why are you paying your staff a crap wage, is the care you offer not up to standard or are you shafting your workers?
You can train someone to clean up a mess and deliver a meal, you cannot train someone to have a caring attitude that puts the concerns of the patients first.
Pay them what they are worth, $20.00 minimum per hour.
“@A1lens, You lost my point”
I think you’ve deliberately failed to address mine.
Sadly for care workers, the industry isn’t a good payer, just like nursing used to be before the value and worth of registered nurses was reflected in their pay packets.
Stick some money into wages and your argument about mechanics on minimum wage becomes redundant.
It’s a real shame that worth and benefit to the community is measured in income. A progressive little country like ours should be rewarding those that provide vital but thankless tasks.
I, for example, value a care worker over a middle management pen pusher anyday.
I tend to agree with A1lens. If you walk into most care homes yuo know that the workers care and work hard. You would not know what their pay level is.
The wage issue is not the only problem with the industry. The smaller operators got driven out as the levels of government compliance increased. It had to increase to weed out the dodgy operators but of course it left the door open for corporates to come in and take over.
I am not able to comment on the ROI that the operators get, but I would imagine that any increase is ultimately passed on to the customer.
Everyone goes on about how wages etc are so much better in Australia, yet when I visit there, I find it a very expensive place to reside, so maybe we have to endure some infaltionary pressure and get the base wage rates increased.
I have no issue with that and I have no issue with personal tax rates being increased at the higher level.
Whereas in Australia, Fair Work Australia, have made an industry wide award that amounts to a 41% pay increase over the next 8 years for worker in that sector.
http://www.agedcareinsite.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=Community+Care&idArticle=23106
Let’s catch up with Australia, by instituting a similar framework of binding industry-wide reviews of pay and conditions.
@Ben, its fine to increase wages as long as everyone is prepared to pay a higher price for associated services…
Aged Care workers are an incredibly dedicated bunch of workers. They work in an industry however where the margins are very tight and they are kept on an absolute minimum hourly rate. But there are homes around the country where there are very few or no employees who are union members. Basically they are scared of losing what they have got if they challenge, as union members, the conditions they have to work in. Look at how more advanced the Aged Care Workers conditions in Australia are – when thye unionised a number of years ago, things changed drastically for the workers.
Until the majority unionise and establish collective bargaining there will be no change.
What per cent of the total workforce of aged care workers in 1500?
The only real solution is for the govt to create the conditions that a union otherwise would, and for that to happen we need a Labour Party in Govt.
Remember the last General Strike?
@ Darien
“I also know how much former Labour Ministers did to try to address the problem of low pay in this burgeoning industry”
So what you are saying is that Labour had 9 years to sort this crap out and you failed. If you could not resolve the issues while in Govt, what good other than grabbing headlines can you expect to do now?
PS. NZ on the whole undervalues this work. It is a societal/cultural issue – this should not be used to politicise unionism.
“its fine to increase wages as long as everyone is prepared to pay a higher price for associated services…”
Or not, if bosses reduce profits instead of raising prices.
Living wages for employees should be a core business cost.
If a company can’t pay them and also run at an acceptable profit, then either their operating model is wrong or they’re not as good at their jobs as they think they are.
A business plan using minimum wage as a cost saving measure deserves all the strike action and negative public reaction it can get.
Also add in that on the whole the aged care sector is dominated by owners with a profit motive. While beachbum has a point about watch for increased prices if wages go up, the owners also have to deliver what they advertise and promise. There is no written or unwritten rule that an increase in wages can only happen if the profit margin or drawings of the owner stay the same. It is possible, for example for an owner to take a drop in drawings or dividends and still have a very tidy income because it is the right thing to do and because aged care is not only about making money.