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Gold standard
Aged care workers demand
special COVID-19 paid leave.
By Conor Burke
The United Workers Union has
launched a national campaign to
get aged care providers and the
federal government to fund COVID-19 paid
leave for frontline aged care staff.
In light of major COVID-19 outbreaks at
several aged care homes, which have seen
dozens of staff forced into isolation, the
‘Keep Me Safe #FundMyLeave’ campaign
wants fully paid leave for full-time and
casual aged care workers who may
contract the virus or need to self-isolate
as a precaution.
In light of recent comments by Australia’s
Chief Medical Officer, Professor Brendan
Murphy, that workers should no longer
“solider on” and turn up to work if sick,
paid leave is crucial for low‐paid aged care
workers, the union says.
“Initially they said we’d have to use our
annual leave and our sick leave. And then
recently within the last month, they said
they would give us two weeks’ unpaid
leave if we were to [get] the virus,” enrolled
nurse Melinda Vaz says of her employer of
13 years.
“But a lot of my fellow colleagues aren’t
very happy with that. They’d prefer to
have paid leave, because you’ve still got
bills at the end of the day,” she tells Aged
Care Insite.
“And what if you run out of annual leave
and sick leave and then you’ve only got two
weeks of unpaid leave? You’ve got nothing
to support yourself. And who’s to say that,
if we have it in this facility, that we [caught]
it here or outside of the facility, coming in.”
Vaz is worried that people will still feel
forced to work, endangering themselves
and residents if something is not done.
“If anybody has a slight sniffle or a cough
and then they’re away, how are they going
to replace them? Who are they going to
replace them with?”
Carolyn Smith, the United Workers Union
aged care national director, agrees. She
says the longer the pandemic plays out,
the more acute this issue will become in a
sector that’s already understaffed.
“I think there’s an economic issue for the
workers about losing income, but there’s
also a public health issue, particularly in
aged care, where we see [for example] the
Newmarch House situation and the advice
then from the NSW Chief Health Officer
to aged care workers to not come to work
even if you’ve got a mild sore throat,” she
tells Aged Care Insite.
“That’s a lot of days in the next six
months that people might wake up with
a mild sore throat, and if they’re having to
decide whether to come to work or not be
paid – and that’s obviously casuals who
don’t have any sick leave – but if you’ve
used it up, it won’t take long to use up your
sick leave.
“There’s an economic issue for those
workers, and there’s a public health issue
for the community, and particularly for just
incredibly vulnerable people.”
To the predictable retorts from the
government and providers that there is
no money for such provisions, Smith is
left unmoved.
“The government does have money. The
government is choosing to spend money,
and at this moment we think this is a really
important place for money to be spent.
“So, there’s a lot of money being
spent on the economy by the federal
government, and that’s a good thing.
But this is a really important health issue
as well.”
Smith applauds the comments made
by Australia’s Chief Medical Officer from
a public health perspective, but says that
this does not marry up with the experience
of an aged care worker on a low wage,
especially at a time of mass unemployment
where they may be the only earner in their
family for the foreseeable future.
“He’s making a very important public
health issue,” she says. “That public
health issue does not connect to the
lived experience of many, many workers.
Workers who are casual, workers who have
used up their sick leave – low-paid workers
who’ve used up their sick leave.
“The public health message doesn’t
connect to the basic lived reality of many
aged care workers.”
And this problem may speak to the wider
issue of a sector under constant financial
strain, says Smith.
“The funding model to the sector
is broken. You can have a discussion
about whether the providers are using
the funding to the best of their ability,
but where you have over 50 per cent of
providers saying they’re running at a loss,
and I think that’ll increase with the impacts
of COVID, we have to accept that the
funding model is broken,” she says.
Vaz simply wants to see any extra
funding – as was announced in recent
months – make its way to the workers.
“It needs to filter down to the carers
because, I mean, I know [providers] like to
put a lot of money into other gadgets and
other things, but at the end of the day, it
needs to be the people working on the
floor that look after the residents,” she says.
“We’re the ones that are coming in,
frontline workers, and we’re willing to
take it on because these residents we
find very important. We want to look after
them properly – we just don’t want to
abandon them.
“So we want to come to work, but we
also want to be covered as well, because
we may be frightened that if we come into
work, we may take it back home to our
own families.” ■
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agedcareinsite.com.au