Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Senate Select Committee on Job Security's second interim report also. Firstly, I would like to thank the committee chair, Senator Tony Sheldon, and my fellow committee members for the incredible work that everyone is doing on this committee. I would also like to acknowledge the witnesses that have contributed evidence from their own lives, evidence that has been absolutely crucial to the writing of this interim report—in particular, the United Workers Union, the Australian nursing and midwifery union, the Australian Health Services Union, the Health Workers Union and all of the dedicated workers who've shared their stories with us.

The crisis of insecure work is right at the heart of the ongoing crisis in our aged-care system. Australians know the value of our essential aged-care sector and they know the value of the thousands of aged-care workers, nurses, personal care workers, cleaners and catering workers who keep our aged-care system running. The millions of Australians who depend on the care sector know firsthand the importance of these frontline professionals, but the aged-care sector is in crisis—a crisis exposed by the royal commission, a crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that has us facing a workforce shortage of over 100,000 workers over the next 10 years and a crisis that has been ignored for eight years by this Liberal-National government.

The crisis in aged care is fundamentally a crisis of insecure work. On this committee, we have heard damning evidence of the prevalence and impact of insecurity in the aged-care sector. We heard that overreliance on insecure work practices is basically a business model in aged care. It's a business model which means workers are left desperate, with little choice but to accept work across multiple employers to make ends meet. It's a business model which impacts on the quality of care for vulnerable people in the aged-care sector. Ray Collins from the Health Workers Union told the committee:

… it suits the business model to keep me as a worker lean and mean. You give me the minimal hours you can give me. You manipulate the hours and the workers to suit your dollar needs, not your care needs.

Insecure work in the aged-care sector takes the form of low pay and low-hour part-time contracts. It's a system that provides flexibility for employers at the expense of employees. We found aged-care workers are hired on part-time contracts with guaranteed hours as low as just several hours per week, and any hours over that are not guaranteed and any extra hours they are given don't attract overtime or penalty rates. While the majority work above their minimum hours, they can't count on those hours. They can't count on them to put food on the table. They can't count on them to prove their hours to get a rental agreement or a mortgage.

And then there is the chronic low pay on top of the short hours worked, which we heard is a result of systematic undervaluation of care work as 'unskilled women's work'. Professor Sarah Charlesworth, from RMIT, explained how gender discrimination has led to undervaluation and work insecurity. She said:

This gendered nature of job insecurity is underpinned by a lack of value accorded to the work and the workers who perform it, which draws on a view of aged care as something women do for free and are therefore unskilled and is therefore not quite work.

This system of chronic low pay and low-hour contracts leaves these essential workers desperate, in a constant limbo, not knowing how many hours they will work each week, not knowing how they will be able to afford to pay their bills, and unable to properly plan their lives. We heard from workers across the sector about the impacts of insecure work on their health and on their families. Anu Singh, an aged-care worker, told the committee:

'Apprehension', 'self-doubt', 'stress',' unscheduled', 'instability'—for me these words define the job insecurity that we actually go through all the time.

Paul Bott told the committee:

I'm renting with my wife and three kids. Trying to live on two shifts a week just doesn't quite cut it.

Taking jobs with low wages and a lack of stable hours is not a choice that workers are freely making, because it isn't a choice. Insecure jobs are all that is on offer for these workers in this sector. It is built in, and baked in, to our aged-care system in Australia today. These essential workers deserve so much more.

The committee heard that it's not just workers who are impacted by this insecurity, but also the millions of Australians who depend on the care sector. No-one can deny the tragic consequences of insecure work in the aged-care system throughout the pandemic. There have been over 700 confirmed COVID-related deaths in Australian government subsidised aged-care facilities. The committee heard that, during this time, large numbers of aged-care workers were working across multiple sites to make ends meet, and this avoidable situation was found to significantly contribute to the spread of COVID.

And, outside of the pandemic, the committee heard that insecurity and casualisation of the care-sector workforce consistently leads to a reduction in the quality of care. Lloyd Williams, national secretary of the Health Services Union, outlined the problem for residents. He said:

It creates a lack of continuity of care. Can you imagine what it would be like to have a different person coming into your home and showering you every day?

Melinda Vaz, an aged-care worker, described the impact of inconsistent staff on residents suffering from dementia. She said:

On every shift, I never know who is going to turn up, how many staff are going to turn up and the experience they will have. I work in a dementia wing, and it's extremely important to have familiar staff because they know the people and they know the care needs of each person.

We cannot deliver the high level of quality care that Australians deserve without fixing the crisis of insecure work in aged care. That crisis is present across the broader care sector, including disability care as well. The committee found that workers in the care sector face unique challenges in addressing these issues in their workplaces. Care-sector workers can't simply sit down and win secure jobs, facility by facility, one by one. There are thousands of aged-care providers—some big, but most small. There are thousands of disability providers, and it is just an impossible task. If these workers, these essential dedicated workers, make it to some form of bargaining table to sit down with their employers, the response is that there's no money for better pay and more secure jobs because the funding just isn't there. That's because the people who set the funding, the federal government, are not required to be in those conversations listening to workers. Carolyn Smith, of the United Workers Union, said:

We're not talking to the people who hold the purse strings. What happens, and we've seen this over the last five years with freezes to the funding model, is providers will say to us, 'We want to do this but we just don't have the money.'

So workers are locked out of fighting for secure jobs and better wages across the aged-care sector. The system is just broken for them, and it's leaving them in these low-paid and insecure jobs. The committee found that we can't fix insecure work in the care sector without a system where care workers, their employers and the government can come together and decide on solutions. Employers, peak bodies and unions all agreed that meaningful solutions can only be delivered if everyone is in the room and if everyone is at the table where workers' voices are heard and where quality care is prioritised over profit—real solutions that will ensure these essential workers are paid what they deserve and have the good, secure jobs they need to support themselves and their families, because this isn't work that they just do for the love of it; this is highly skilled and critical work that our country is increasingly relying on. Our dedicated care workers deserve to be respected, they deserve to be valued and they deserve to be heard, and, throughout this committee, their voices were heard loud and clear by the senators participating. I seek leave to continue my remarks.