Aged Care Insite Issue 114 | Oct-Nov 2019 | Page 16

industry & reform Stop underpaying aged care workers Why we should advocate for better wages. Gay Taylor interviewed by Conor Burke T he aged care industry is big business. It accounts for approximately 1 per cent of Australia’s GDP, with revenues of over $20 billion and about 5 per cent annual growth. For the near quarter of a million aged care workers, this should equate to good working conditions and fair pay. However, time and again we hear from frontline workers that this isn’t the case. Along with staff-to-patient ratios, there are increasing calls for aged care workers to get significant pay increases. During this year’s federal election campaign, Labor caused uproar by 14 agedcareinsite.com.au promising to increase the wages of low‑paid childcare workers but not those of aged care workers. Elsewhere, COTA chief executive Ian Yates told the royal commission earlier this year that: “The aged care sector overall is underpaid by a factor of at least 15 per cent. That’s a real challenge, yes, and I think getting stuff right is going to be a very important part of the focus and outcome of this commission.” Gay Taylor, an RN with six years of experience working in aged care, believes the reasons aged care workers are ignored are myriad. The marketisation of the sector stemming from reform in the 1980s has kept staffing levels low, and she believes these staff do not want to appear greedy or uncaring in fighting for better wages. Taylor spoke with Aged Care Insite to unpack some of these issues. ACI: Are all aged care workers underpaid? GT: Nurses in aged care are underpaid compared to their hospital counterparts, and of course the wages for care workers are also fairly low. Probably comparative with childcare workers, where it’s a fairly low paid industry. To be honest, the main thrust of my talk was not just that aged care workers were underpaid. The biggest crisis in the aged care industry, in residential aged care, is critical under-staffing. The fact that there are no staff-to-resident ratios mean that even in a very good home (and I worked in one), there is never a time where there is enough staff to provide the sort of care that you would want your parents to have. Aged care is a $20 billion a year industry and contributes about 1 per cent to GDP. Yet the big players always cry poor. They say they can’t afford to pay staff more and can’t afford more staff. When I was researching this talk, I also believed the rhetoric, which most people believe, that residential aged care is a bottomless pit of financial need. In doing the research, I read the funding and financing of the aged care sector report 2017 – a government report on the public record. I was really shocked to read those figures that you’ve mentioned, which is that in 2015–16, residential aged care