workforce
No easy answers
Care workers outside Epping Gardens Aged Care Home. Photo: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images.
Union says paid pandemic
leave won’t reach all workers.
By Conor Burke and AAP
Victorian aged care is struggling to
contain the COVID-19 outbreak
tearing through the system,
with over a thousand active cases linked
to aged care, including workers, and
87 facilities having active outbreaks,
according to figures released by the
state government.
About 80 per cent of Victoria’s new
infections since May have been linked to
workplace transmission and in light of this,
the Fair Work Commission announced that
aged care workers would be eligible for
paid pandemic leave.
The ruling grants paid pandemic leave
to staff working in residential aged care
under the Aged Care Award, the Nurses
Award and the Health Professionals Award.
The Fair Work Commission said the
pandemic leave will:
• apply to workers who are required by
their employer or a government medical
authority or on the advice of a medical
practitioner to self-isolate because they
display COVID-19 symptoms or have
come into contact with a suspected case
• is limited to up to two weeks’ paid leave
on each occasion of self-isolation
• not be paid to workers who are able
to work at home or remotely during
self-isolation.
26 agedcareinsite.com.au
NO SILVER BULLET
However, the United Workers Union
believes that the new pandemic leave is
not a “silver bullet” that will save Australia
from a second wave of COVID-19 cases
nationwide as many workers who are not
on the award rates will still not be eligible.
According to a new survey nine out
of 10 aged care workers said they could
not afford to take unpaid leave if they
needed to. The same proportion of aged
care workers said they were worried
their colleagues may come to work sick
because they don’t have any sick leave.
“There’s two bits of the paid pandemic
leave. There’s the decision in Fair Work, but
unfortunately that only covers aged care
workers who are directly on the award.
It doesn’t cover any who have registered
enterprise agreements. And the vast
majority of aged care workers would be
on a bargaining agreement. I couldn’t give
you percentages, but off the top of my
head, it’d be 70-80 per cent of workers,”
said Carolyn Smith, aged care director for
the United Workers Union.
“And when you start to look at numbers
and bed sizes, there’s probably 10 or 20 big
providers in each state that really had that
proportion of the workforce.”
Smith says that the government has
reacted too slowly to the effect the
pandemic is having on the sector and
she points to the outbreak in Newmarch
House as the harbinger of the current
situation in Victoria.
“We could have seen this coming; we
certainly should have seen it coming
after Newmarch. But you look around the
world, aged care is a flashpoint because
you’ve got the group of people who
are most vulnerable to COVID because
of their age and their physical condition,”
she said.
“One of the issues in Victoria, when you
look at everywhere where workplaces are
now the highest area of spread [is that]
they are all vulnerable workforces that are
casual, that perhaps work a number of
different jobs that are in communities that
haven’t been well communicated with
about COVID because they’re not Englishspeaking
background communities.
“The federal government did almost
nothing in this area. And now, are holding
their hands up in the air, saying, ‘How did
this happen?’ It’s quite clear that this was
potentially going to happen.”
LISTEN TO THE EXPERTS
Smith says the government should be
doing more to hear the concerns of unions,
peak bodies and the workers themselves as
they are the experts in the field.
She points to the survey by her
union of 1000 aged care workers
which found that two-thirds say they
do not feel very prepared if there is a
coronavirus outbreak at their centre
and three in 10 say they have not had
training in how to use personal protective
equipment.