Casual workers to get government-funded sick leave in Victorian trial
The Victorian government will provide sick leave to casual workers in a trial program developed in response to the spread of coronavirus in insecure workplaces during Melbourne’s second wave.
The program will provide up to five days of sick or carer’s leave, at minimum wage rates, to workers in highrisk industries including aged care staff, cleaners, supermarket workers, hospitality workers and security guards. It is set to begin in early 2022, and consultation will open this month.
The workplace safety minister, Ingrid Stitt, said the trial program would mean workers did not have to choose between taking a sick day and being able to pay rent.
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“It is unacceptable that any worker should have to choose between feeding their family and keeping their workmates and community safe,” she said. “This scheme will remove that terrible choice for our most vulnerable workers.”
Stitt said the risk of insecure work had been “ignored” during the pandemic.
“We’re putting our hand up when no other government has, to improve the health, safety and economic security of these vital workers,” she said.
She said the state government had paid more than $141m to casual workers to stay home and self-isolate while awaiting a coronavirus test result. The $450 payments were announced in July 2020 – an increase on the original amount of $300.
Workers in Victoria who did not have sick leave also had access to a $1,500 federal government payment during the height of the second wave.
In July 2020, premier Daniel Andrews described the rapid spread of cases during the lockdown in Melbourne as “a commentary on insecure work”.
Supermarket worker Hamish Church said that even during Melbourne’s second wave, workers were punished for refusing shifts due to illness.
“You feel like you will get retaliated against by your boss,” he said. “If you don’t turn up to your shift they will give it to someone else and you will never get those shifts back.”
The 23-year-old has been working in a supermarket for more than two years and said he did not notice any meaningful change in the way managers responded to staff calling in sick after the pandemic was declared.
“They send out emails saying ‘if you feel sick don’t come in’, but as soon as it gets in the way of our jobs it doesn’t matter any more,” he said.
Church said workers were often not given the opportunity to work parttime, even if they worked the same shifts every week. “It’s not a choice – they don’t offer part-time. You either work casual or you don’t work at all.”
It’s a problem that predates the pandemic, said economist Jim Stanford, the director of the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute.
“From both a public health and an economic perspective, it is utterly essential that all workers have the legal right and the financial ability to stay home from work when they are sick or they need to isolate,” he said.
“The past year has shown that every worker needs the ability to stay home for up to two weeks without financial penalty if they are unwell … it has cost
thousands of lives around the world and I can safely say dozens or hundreds of lives in Australia where people went to work when they should have stayed home.”
However Stanford said the state government stepping in to cover sick leave entitlements was a stopgap, and the focus should be on reducing rates of casualisation and requiring employers to provide sick and carer’s leave to all workers, including those who work casually, in proportion to hours worked.
“I would be worried to see governments bailing out employers’ abuse of this loophole by saying ‘OK we will jump in and provide the sick leave’,” he said. “I can see why that would be an emergency measure but that should not be a permanent solution.