Value of care and support work

Care and support work has traditionally been undervalued. Submissions to the Employment White Paper from care and support sector services, worker representatives and community organisations emphasised that low social status, low pay, and persisting reputations of work as unskilled contribute to the undervaluation of these workers.⁵⁶

The undervaluation and underpayment of care and support workforces is a pervasive issue influenced by the historical context of care and support begin provided, unpaid, by women from within the home. Gendered undervaluation of women’s work has been one of the biggest reasons behind low wages.⁵⁷ Efforts to improve pay and conditions in the care and support economy will promote women’s economic equality more broadly, reducing the pay gap between female‑dominated sectors and the rest of the economy.

The value of work has both financial and social elements. Pay is a driving factor in attracting workers. Recognition is a core social need for people and has notable impacts in attraction and retention.  Attracting men to these jobs by improving pay and changing perceptions about the work may aid in addressing our care and support workforce shortages and overcoming gender segregation in care and support.

Addressing the issue of low wages

While pay for care and support jobs varies by role, 95 per cent of workers are earning at rates below the Australian average.⁵⁸ The Fair Work Commission (FWC) also recently found that minimum wage rates for direct care roles in aged care “do not properly compensate workers for the value of work performed.⁵⁹

The Australian Government is investing $11.3 billion to fund a 15 per cent pay raise, over 4 years, for aged care workers in direct care roles. It is projected that this will impact around 250,000 frontline workers across the country. This decision follows the Australian Government’s submission to the FWC in August, 2022 which supported the wage increase.

Furthermore, the Australian Government’s recent Secure Jobs, Better Pay reforms to the Fair Work Act 2009 will support workers in female-dominated industries and occupations and will help close the gender pay gap more broadly.

In addition to making gender equality a central objective of the Fair Work Act and the Modern Awards objective, these reforms:

• Established new FWC Expert Panels for Pay Equity and the Care and Community Sector. This will help ensure the Fair Work Commission has the expertise to appropriately address gender-based undervaluation and help improve pay and conditions in low paid, feminised workforces.
• Introduced a statutory Equal Remuneration Principle. This will guide how the FWC considers pay equity cases and addresses barriers that have prevented the FWC from being able to effectively tackle gender-based undervaluation in the past.

Care and support sectors face challenges to bargaining and unionisation, partly because it is often isolated work and partly because high proportions of these workers are casuals or contractors.⁶⁰ Additionally, government plays a big role in setting care and support prices, through regulation and price capping. This means employers may be limited in their ability to increase pay without passing costs on to consumers or requiring extra public funding.

This combination of fragmented, insecure work that is feminised and low-paid has resulted in less enterprise bargaining in care and support than other systems. The supported bargaining stream in the Secure Jobs, Better Pay reforms may allow enterprise bargaining to be a more effective driver of wages and conditions in care and support systems.⁶¹ The stream will allow low‑paid workers to bargain with assistance from the FWC. It will also compel parties who exert a high degree of control over the terms and conditions of the workers to attend conferences.

Increasing pay for care and support workers is important, but without changes to productivity it would lead to significant increases in the costs of care and support services. This is because labour forms the majority of the costs of care and support services.

In a fiscally constrained environment, higher pay in care and support services funded by the Government needs to be carefully balanced. Increasing demand for care and support services, rising service costs amid high inflation and a shrinking working population are all expected to increase the cost of providing these services.

This need to increase pay and conditions of care and support workers makes sustainable funding for care and support services all the more important. There is a need to increase productivity to drive real wages growth. The strategy to ensure that care and support services are sustainable and productive is discussed under Goal 3: Productive and sustainable.

Improving worker recognition

Workers in the care and support economy report being appreciated by those accessing care and support and their families, but unrecognised by their managers, policymakers and the wider community. Care and support workers who report not feeling valued for the work they do are more likely to leave the workforce.⁶²

NDIS workers cited negative workplace culture or management issues as the tied highest single factor for leaving; inversely, commitment to an organisation is among the strongest predictors of intention to stay.⁶³ Aged care workers commonly report management who are not present in day-to-day work, and who don’t understand the relevant issues, which leads to a feeling of lack of support.⁶⁴ Workplace culture is also critical in retaining and sustaining educators in ECEC.⁶⁵ Improved management capability across the care and support economy can support employee satisfaction.

Improving public perceptions of a profession requires more than just changing titles and increasing pay. Working conditions that give dignity to workers are also important to building recognition. Additionally, opportunities for individual workers to receive praise and acknowledgement for their use of skills are important to support their recognition as skilled experts.

Societal valuation of a profession is not something governments can mandate from the top down, but it does start with how care and support funding is viewed and talked about. Currently, it is treated as an expense rather than an investment. But the wellbeing of people in our community – those receiving care and support and those enabled to work because of it – can’t be put down to a number in a government budget.

The community needs to decide, via an informed conversation, how we will balance the trade-offs of social and financial valuation. This is discussed further in Goal 3: Productive and sustainable.

56. Treasury (Department of the Treasury), ‘Employment White Paper Submissions,’ Treasury, 8 April 2023, accessed April 2023.Return to footnote 56 ↩
57. Senate Select Committee on Work and Care, ‘Final Report’, 2023. [83]Return to footnote 57 ↩
58. NSC, ‘Care Workforce Labour Market Study.’ [156]Return to footnote 58 ↩
59. Decision (‘Work Value Case – Aged Care Industry’) [2022] FWCFB 200 [899] at 250, 1-337. Return to footnote 59 ↩
60. ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions), ‘The Future of Work: Greater Inequality and Insecurity Unless We Act,’ Submission No. 112 to the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Work and Workers Inquiry, 26 February 2018. Return to footnote 60 ↩
61. ‘Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022: Second Reading Speech.’  Return to footnote 61 ↩
62. Austen, S. et al, ‘Recognition: applications in aged care work,’ Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2016, Vol. 40/4, pp. 1037-1054, doi: 10.1093/cje/bev057; Elstad, J. and M. Vabø, ‘Lack of recognition at the societal level heightens turnover considerations among Nordic eldercare workers: a quantitative analysis of survey data,’ BMC Health Services Research, 2021, Vol. 21/1, doi: 10.1186/s12913-021-06734-4.Return to footnote 62 ↩
63. BETA, NDIS workforce retentionReturn to footnote 63 ↩
64. S Hodgkin, J Warburton, P Savy and M Moore, 'Workforce Crisis in Residential Aged Care: Insights from Rural, Older Workers', Australian Journal of Public Administration, 2016, 76(1): 93-105, doi: 10:1111/1467-8500.12204.Return to footnote 64 ↩
65. K Thorpe et al., ‘Identifying predictors of retention and professional wellbeing of the early childhood education workforce in a time of change,’ Journal of Educational Change, 2020, 21(1), 623-647. Return to footnote 65 ↩