Community Organisations Call On Opposition Parties To Commit To Funding Care And Support Workers’ Pay Equity Settlement – PSA

Unions, care and support providers, and community organisations have written an open letter to opposition parties asking them to commit to settling and fully funding the care and support workers’ pay equity claim within the first 100 days of the next Government based on the agreed undervaluation.

The open letter, signed by 29 organisations including all the unions involved in the claim, the provider peak bodies, and a number of employers, states that the claim was all but agreed when the current Government gutted the Equal Pay Act.

“This letter, signed by peak bodies in the care and support sector and unions, shows the widespread support for urgently settling this claim.”

“Care and support workers have waited too long already. The comparator roles are agreed, the level of undervaluation is agreed, the only action left is funding and settling the claim quickly,” said PSA Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi Assistant Secretary Melissa Woolley who was a negotiator for unions in the claim.

“Unions and employers spent hundreds of hours on the claim. They agreed the comparator roles. They found care and support workers were undervalued by between 24 and 38 percent.

“Settling this claim should be a top priority for the next Government in the first 100 days. Care and support workers are the backbone of our health system.

“A settlement only works if it is paid for. These services are mostly funded by the Crown. Providers cannot be left to find the money.

“Parties should build the settlement on what is agreed, and they should say now whether they will.”

The letter says any settlement must come with a commitment to fund:

• the direct costs of the pay equity settlement
• the flow-on pay adjustments across the wider care workforce, including those needed
• to maintain pay differentials that recognise qualifications, experience, clinical responsibilities and professional accountability

The letter says these costs must be built into the funding models for the services concerned, so providers do not absorb them.

Settling the claim would change the lives of the women who do this work. It would also benefit the wider economy. PSA analysis of Treasury modelling shows reinstating it would grow the economy by $13.5 billion over four years, create around 13,000 jobs, and lift an estimated 11,000 children out of poverty.

New Zealanders back it. A recent Talbot Mills poll found that New Zealanders would be prepared to delay the Government’s return to surplus by a year to restore pay equity than oppose it, 49 percent to 28 percent.

The open letter is here: Open Letter on Pay Equity.

Signatories:

1. Access

2. ActionStation

3. Aged Care Association New Zealand

4. Aotearoa Women’s Watch

5. Atamira Platform

6. Auckland Action Against Poverty

7. AUT Social Transformation Research Institute

8. BPW New Zealand

9. Carers New Zealand

10. CBCT

11. E tū

12. Disabled Persons Assembly NZ

13. Filipino Care Workers United

14. Home and Community Health Association

15. Migrant Action Trust

16. Mōkihi Hauora

17. National Council of Women of New Zealand

18. New Zealand Disability Support Network

19. New Zealand Nurses Organisation

20. NUPE

21. NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi

22. PSA Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi

23. Rodger Wright Harm Reduction Network

24. Te Mana Taki Havora Health Action Trust

25. Te Roopu Taurima

26. Te Wāhi Wāhine o Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland Women’s Centre

27. Totara Farm Trust

28. Working Women’s Resource Centre

29. YWCA