Care and Support Workers Pay Equity


 

Download the Care and Support Pay Equity Claim, including list of employer parties

Member updates

Background

NZNO, the PSA and E tū raised a Pay Equity claim on behalf of workers with 15 employers in the care and support sector on the 1 July 2022.

Those employers are: Healthcare NZ, Geneva Healthcare, NZ Community living, VisionWest, Spectrum Care, Te Roopu Taurima, Emerge Aotearoa, Pathways Health, Toucan Taranaki, Lifewise Trust, Presbyterian Support Central, Bupa, Pacific Homecare, CCS Disability Action and Dunedin Community Care.

Extending the claim to all care and support workers

There is a process which allows for the Pay Equity outcome to be extended to deliver for all workers who are government funded and who do the same work as the care and support workers who work for the employers named in the claim. Unfortunately, this process doesn’t guarantee all workers will get the new Pay Equity rates at the same time, but the unions are strongly advocating for this to happen. We want to see every care and support worker receiving Pay Equity concurrently.

The Pay Equity process so far

  1. Arguability needed to be established and to do that we had to show that the work is predominantly performed by female employees and that it is arguable that the work is currently undervalued or has historically been undervalued. This has been done.
  2. Employers and unions agree how to work together to progress the claim and get resource to manage the parties to support the work that needs to be done. Another tick – this has also been done!
  3. Then comes the evidence the employers and unions need to prove the case. We have interviewed care and support workers all over Aotearoa to assess the skills, responsibilities, and the degree of effort in the work they all do. We did around 50 interviews all up and if that included you, thank you! From these we developed a ‘worker profile’ of care and support workers.
  4. Next, we started looking at ‘comparators’, workers who work in male-dominated jobs that demand the same level of skills, responsibility and degree of effort that is required of care and support work. We found three jobs that fit this profile.
  5. Over five days, a small group of employer and union representatives met to compare the work of care and support workers with the three jobs that are male-dominated. We then agreed on points attached to all those roles.
  6. Based on this evidence, all parties needed to agree that ‘undervaluation’ exists. This means that there is evidence that says that care and support workers have been discriminated against because it is work largely done by women. The parties to the claim have agreed that this undervaluation exists.
  7. We have also started looking at the terms and conditions of care and support workers at the named employers of the claim and at the terms and conditions of the three male-dominated comparators. Discussions have included pay, terms and conditions, qualifications, who’s included in the settlement, as well as other things.

What happens next?

Unions and employers are preparing for bargaining. We have bargaining dates set for July and will keep talking to employers in the meantime.

Before we enter into bargaining, employers are collecting a lot of data and providing lots of information to the funders who fund care and support.

Once the funders (Te Whatu Ora, Whaikaha, etc) have all the information, they need to make some decisions to fund the outcome in principle.

We need this to happen before we can go into bargaining in July, and the good news is that we are on track for this to happen.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Will we get a pay rise through the Pay Equity process this year?

This is unknown. It will depend on how long the bargaining takes and how long it takes the Government to fund the named employers to pay their workers the new Pay Equity rates..

  • I don’t work for a named employer will I get the settlement?

There is the funded framework which allows for a settlement to be extended to other care and support workers. It doesn’t say it has to happen at the same time though. We need to lobby for this.

  • What happens if there is a change of government? Would that put this at risk?

Yes, potentially. National and Act have not been overly supportive of the Pay Equity process. The funded framework for the extension to the whole sector too is at risk because the framework is not law. It is a policy decision and can be taken away if a new government is voted in.

  • What will be in the settlement?

It's too early to say, but unions will be pursing the best possible settlement we can get. We expect it to be significant!