Caring counts
Five years after former Equal Opportunities Commissioner Dr Judy McGregor highlighted the “modern-day slavery” faced by aged-care workers in her Caring Counts report, a new survey shows they are still getting a raw deal.
But while AUT’s 2016
Aged Care Workforce Survey, released late last month, found staff are stressed, feel underpaid and have little job security, Judy hopes it will be the impetus for New Zealand to become a world leader in valuing the work of carers.
The survey, which also confirms an ongoing shortage of workers in aged care, comes five years after Judy went undercover as a rest home worker during an investigation into working conditions in the sector. That sting, which highlighted how thousands of women were on appallingly low wages for difficult work that was “grossly undervalued”, was the catalyst for April’s pay equity settlement, which will see some 55,000 care workers get a pay rise from July 1.
That settlement – also known as the Bartlett law after Kristine Bartlett, the woman who spearheaded the campaign – recognises that some jobs pay less because they are done mainly by women.
“For too many years, carers had been invisible in terms of the workforce and invisible in terms of voice,” says Judy, now a Professor of Human Rights at AUT.
“When the Caring Counts report came out, thousands of family members who had elderly dependants or disabled kids who were being cared for rang to say how fantastic it was that the angels who look after us have been recognised and acknowledged. I think one of the pressures on the
government to affect the settlement was the fact that the public actually did care that carers were underpaid.”
Judy believes the settlement, along with the results of the survey, could lead to groundbreaking changes in the aged-care sector, but it had to be industry-led and issues around working conditions – insecure hours, stress and burnout – still need to be addressed.
“And we desperately need more young carers because the other hidden problem is the age of carers, they’re ageing themselves. Many of them say they are ‘knackered’. Improving professionalisation and an acknowledgment that carers count has to be led by someone in the industry saying we could be the best in the world.
“It’s probably going to be a combination of the carers themselves and the very profitable new industries sprouting up around caring that will give that impetus.”
Her main gripe with the legislation is that it again puts the onus on women to take a complaint and jump through a series of “quite complicated” hoops to prove they didn’t have pay equity.
“But it’s a start. Aged care is under the spotlight again, and at a time when more and more New Zealanders need it and will be needing it. I just hope that in 10 or 20 years’ time, when we’re all on our own Zimmer frames, it’s not going to be the same.”