No agreement yet on Workforce Compact
Sources close to the Strategic Workforce Advisory Group (SWAG) say negotiations around the content of the $1.2bn Aged Care Workforce Compact have stalled, amid growing concern about what providers will have to agree to.
By Stephen Easton
The federal government is expected to endorse the Aged Care Workforce Compact later this month but negotiations have stalled, according to informed sources.
The agreement on how to redirect $1.2 billion in funding to attract more workers to aged care is being hammered out by unions, aged care providers and the Australian Government in the Strategic Workforce Advisory Group (SWAG), chaired by Commissioner Anne Gooley of Fair Work Australia.
The Minister for Ageing, Mark Butler, had hoped the SWAG would deliver its final version of the Compact in September, to be announced publicly in late October pending the government’s tick of approval.
But according to several sources close to the negotiations, the parties have not reached an agreement and Commissioner Gooley is currently attempting to get the negotiations back on track.
The Compact is intended to compel aged care employers to pay higher wages using the $1.2 billion of redirected funding, which will be allocated over four years to those who accept the commitments in the document.
The funding will be available from 1 July 2013, starting with an increase of 1 per cent over the basic subsidy, followed by 2 per cent in 2014-15, 3 per cent in 2015-16 and 3.5 per cent in 2016-17.
Under its terms of reference, the SWAG members are also expected to agree on ways to attract and retain aged care staff beyond higher wages: improved career structures; enhanced training and education opportunities; improved career development and workforce planning; and better work practices.
The advisory group was also tasked with agreeing on ways to boost productivity, and obliged to accept enterprise bargaining as the only mechanism for ensuring the more attractive pay, working conditions and other measures are delivered as promised.
Enterprise bargaining could be one sticking point, as Catholic Health Australia and UnitingCare Australia – both of which are directly represented on the SWAG – have argued consistently that the Workforce Compact should permit other ways of fulfilling the commitments and receiving the funding.
‘A troubling document’
In a draft of the Workforce Compact obtained by AAA, dated 26 September, many of the proposed commitments beyond actual wage increases contain little detail and appear to refer to areas, such as health and safety, already covered under existing workplace legislation.
It is not clear from the document how it will be determined if a particular enterprise agreement fulfils the commitments in the Compact, or what the full cost to providers to qualify for the conditional funding will be, beyond the actual wage increases.
The draft also contains pledges on the part of the government to make it easier for providers to comply with the Compact.
“The Government agrees to make materials and resources available to assist the aged care sector develop and negotiate enterprise agreements consistent with the Compact,” the draft reads.
“The Australian Government commits to establishing implementation and compliance arrangements that minimise the regulatory burden placed upon aged care providers in applying the Compact in their enterprise.
“The Australian Government will collaborate with the aged care sector in developing advice, support and resources relating to the Compact, including implementation advice and other supporting material.”
For providers without a compliant enterprise agreement in place by 1 July 2013, when the conditional funding becomes available, the draft Compact includes a provision for the funds to be back-paid from 1 July 2013, as long as a compliant agreement is in place by 1 December 2013.
On Wednesday, an email from McCullough Roberston Lawyers described the Compact “in its draft form” as “a troubling document and one which will make aged care providers genuinely consider whether they wish to be party to it”.
The email includes an invitation to a breakfast seminar on 11 October at the firm’s Brisbane office, for “an in-depth examination of the document and its ramifications in the aged care sector”.
Look out for a pay equity claim
While the unions will welcome any wage increases that are achieved through the Workforce Compact process, it is unlikely the process will satisfy them that aged care workers are paid fairly.
The funding for the Compact provides for wage increases far below what aged care unions like the Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) have long campaigned for – pay parity with similar workers in the public health sector.
“… We would like to see nurses and [Assistants in Nursing] in aged care achieving public sector parity,” ANF federal secretary Lee Thomas told AAA earlier this year.
“That was our goal and it remains our goal. We are not only going to do that through this [$1.2 billion]. This money was only ever bridging finance.”
The 26 September draft of the Compact confirms that the interim funding is only to “assist the sector in delivering fair and competitive wages, while longer term options are considered by the Aged Care Financing Authority”.
And according to McCullough Roberston partner Tim Longwill, the new Financing Authority may well have to consider funding much larger pay increases in the near future, if unions make a pay equity claim with Fair Work Australia, similar to the claim which won an 18-42 per cent pay rise for social and community services workers late last year.
“What is almost bound to happen is that the unions will make a pay equity claim in the aged care sector as well, given they would have been emboldened by the success of the [social and community services] pay equity claim, and they are likely to succeed, you would think,” Mr Longwill said.
Last November, Lee Thomas confirmed that the ANF federal executive was considering launching just such a claim at the time.
I am the CEO of Woy Woy Community Aged Care, a 94 bed RAC on the Central Coast of NSW. We will not sucesfully attract professional nurses to aged care until we have parody with the public health sector. At present individual aged care facilities are sponsoring visa applications from overseas nurses at geat expense to facilities particularly smaller ones, only to lose the nurse to the public health sector because of the better pay and conditions. The heavy regulation imposed on residential aged care is driving health professionals from the industry.
The comment that “the Australian Government commits to establishing implementation and compliance arrangements that minimise the regulatory burden….” really to be honest brought a smile to my face. If this was indeed an honest attempt to minimise or reduce regulatory burden it would indeed be a red letter day for our industry, but I fear it is just code for yet another set of spin doctoring. The Compact ‘redirects’ $ 1.2bn – it does not introduce more funds into the sector – and then seeks to be “everything to everybody”. It equates to less than 20 cents an hour per worker (pre-tax). Why not redirect $ 6bn and give everyone $ 1 an hour extra – that’s about 10% of the difference for a nurse working in aged care as opposed to one in the public sector (and two thirds the complete funding for residential care). Whether an employer has been paying award (are there really any out there??) or under a Collective Agreement in excess of the award will matter for nought – once again all tarred with the one brush. What it equates to are fewer hours of care time for older Australians without real increases (not the 0.6% ‘created’ by the ACFI realignment) in funding. Alternatively is it not about time that the Government admitted that it can’t (or doesn’t really wish to) fund aged care as it needs to, and let the industry get on with the job of innovatively and creatively providing these essential services, free of much of the unnecessary red tape currently strangling it? And before the Department’s Minister jumps up – I am suggesting that regulation – risk based, objective and proper – will always remain necessary in government funded services. Hang on – wasn’t that something that the PC report and professor Warren Hogan called for? Something tells me it is a concept contained in pretty much every report on the sector now for a couple of decades. A visionary Government will find a way eventually…..
In whole hearted agreement with Glenn Bunney, neither the Minister, nor the DoHA really have any idea of the total waste of resources the aged care industry expends on red tape, complying with whatever and everything through tedious time-consuming documentation that not even the bureaucrats take time to read. As for the wages compact, is this not the pay off to appease some outspoken unions who are living and operating above their means and require a whole heap of new members to help them balance their books. Clearly, smaller stand alone aged care facilities cannot afford to engage industrial advocates to negotiate collective EBAs with unions, especially since the Gillard Government tampered with ACFI and denied any price indexation this year to reduce aged care expenditure threatening the very existance of these organisations. Redirecting $1.2B from aged care to fund this wages compact is about as low as any government could go. But why should we not be surprised at these moves, especially from a Minister who excells in the art of ‘smoke and mirrors’ This is a government that professed to actually care about older Australians???