Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to cover briefly the circumstances at the Carinya of Bicton aged-care centre in my electorate of Fremantle. The centre has been dealing with an industrial dispute since early last year which highlights a number of issues about workplace fairness in the aged-care sector. The dispute began when management put a new agreement to employees proposing a reduction in the current entitlement from seven or six weeks annual leave to five or four weeks annual leave, while delivering a pay increase of two per cent that would only be paid in the third year of the three-year agreement. Unsurprisingly, that magnificent offer was rejected.

Unfortunately what followed was not a fair and good-faith bargaining process. Indeed the centre's owner and management quickly took a take-it or leave-it approach and then responded to the inevitable and proper industrial action in an inflammatory and illegal way. At one point, centre workers who had been conducting a carefully designed stop-work program, which was premised on maintaining the excellent care of the centre's residents, were locked out by the centre management for seven days. This unprecedented move was subsequently declared illegal by a Fair Work Australia commissioner.

It should be said that Carinya of Bicton is a high quality aged-care facility with good facilities and excellent staff. Throughout this dispute, which was not of their making, the employees and their union, United Voice, have struggled to fight their side of an insupportable and unjust conflict, yet they have always done so with an unswerving commitment to the people in their care. That is a measure of the character of those aged-care workers and of the union that supports them. The Carinya of Bicton situation involves a number of issues that have wider significance. The first is the place of aged-care workers in Australia. They do incredibly important work in caring for some of the most vulnerable in our community but do so with pay and conditions that do not reflect the value and importance of their work. The second is the perennial issue of how difficult it is for government to ensure that critical public care services, which are funded to a significant degree by public moneys but are often provided by private operators, actually deliver the best quality care and fair working conditions. Unfortunately, it remains the case that in vocational areas of work like aged care and in occupations that involve a high proportion of women there are private for-profit operators who are still very much prepared to exploit the vocational commitment and other vulnerabilities of some workers to hold wages down. That is not fair and it is not in the interests of our community's vulnerable elderly people.

This is a difficult policy challenge for government but one that must be taken up with vigour and energy. While I remain hopeful of a good and fair outcome in this matter, I fear that the process may have worn down the employees to the point where an inequitable EBA will be the result, notwithstanding the fortitude and courage that the workers and their union have shown in the last six months. If that occurs, it will be a bad outcome for all of us because a high-quality aged-care system in Australia must be founded on fair pay and conditions for aged care workers.