Valuing caregivers and hospice nurses: caregivers' wages remain appallingly low. The upcoming Caregivers' Week offers another opportunity to highlight this injustice and to put pressure on the Government to take action.

March is an important month for aged-care sector workers. The third week of March each year is Caregivers' Week, originally an initiative of the NZNO's Gerontology Section. The section wanted to acknowledge the value of caregivers' work and the importance of their contribution in caring for the residents and patients in aged-care facilities around the country. Section members organise seminars on specialist topics for caregivers during the week. Caregivers are caring for our parents, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents. Every person receiving care is a member of a family. Our family members are in care because they are no longer able to care for themselves and because we can no longer support them in their own homes or in our homes. They are often vulnerable because of a range of disabilities. They are frequently in fragile health and sometimes difficult to care for.

Dementia can make some aggressive, even violent. Put yourself in a caregiver's shoes and think about what they do on a daily basis. This is what Pahiatua caregiver Leigh Worthington said in NZNO's submission to Parliament's Health Select Committee on Caregivers' Training and Pay in September 2004: "I care for people, whether they can speak to me, whether they understand me. I love caring for them and giving them that last bit of dignity" (1)

Often our members speak of the loving bonds between them and those they care for. Nelson caregiver Libby Binnie described it like this: "When a resident dies it is like losing one of your own family, we get very close to our residents. " Sharon McLuckie from Hamilton told the Select Committee: "When a client dies I do my job and then on the way home I cry. " (1)

If we were in care we would want to be cared for by people who really cared about us; by people who had our interests in mind; who valued us for all we had been during our Eves. As Levin-based caregiver Laurie St Clair said in the submission; "... these people have contributed all their lives. They deserve the best that can be given to them and the people that provide their care deserve the best." (1)

That submission did not get our members the pay and recognition they so richly deserve but we will not stop telling the Government our members must be paid at rates that reflect the value our communities place on caregivers' work. This is why NZNO and the Service and Food Workers' Union have taken the opportunity presented by Caregivers' Week to organise activities to raise public awareness about the injustice of caregivers' wages and conditions.

Last year we encouraged members to send their payslips to Parliament to illustrate the outrageously tow wages paid in this sector. Wages are so tow that when the Government adjusts the minimum wage each year, there are workers in this sector who get a pay rise as a result of that adjustment. This year the Government has announced that the adult minimum wage will rise to $10.25 an hour. That adjustment will have a significant impact on workers" pay in the sector.

We are encouraging members to send their payslips to Prime Minister Helen Clark during Caregivers' Week this month because, despite the best efforts of union members and staff, wages remain appalling tow. The payslips will clearly demonstrate this. The Government can do something about this. There is a direct link between the funding governments put into the sector and the wages paid to caregivers and other workers in the sector.

Our message to the Government and to those employers who can easily afford to pay caregivers fairly is the same as it has been for some time now--"Value Caregiving" by paying caregivers a rate that reflects the importance of their job, ie no less than $16 an hour.

NZNO expects a labour-led Government to recognise the pay injustice in the aged-care sector and to address this injustice by providing enough funding in the 2006/2007 Budget specifically to boost wages and ensure adequate training in the sector. NZNO will continue making this point to the Government white injustice persists.

Pay parity for hospice nurses

Last year NZNO members working in most of the country's hospices voted to negotiate a multi-employer collective agreement and to claim pay parity with their district health board (DHB) nursing colleagues. The negotiations were comparatively short and sweet, and agreement in principle was reached to pay DHB rates to hospice nurses. But that old bogey "funding" has put a spanner in the works again.

In July last year, the then Minister of Health Annette King announced that DHBs were being given enough money to enable them to fund hospices for 100 percent of their essential services, which are defined in three categories: assessment and care co-ordination; clinical care; and support care, ie hospice nurses' work. In January this year there was a flurry of stories in newspapers about how 11 of the 21 DHBs had not passed on that funding to hospices in their regions. Various reasons were given: a DHB funding formula for hospices had to be invented and approved; and some DHBs were wanting some of the hospice funding to cover the cost of their own "new initiatives" in cancer care.

So what does all this mean for our members working in hospices? Is it time to heat up the oven for another round of baking or for members to do other fund raising events after work? No way! Watch out for the "Not Another Cake Stall" action at a shopping mall near you. Hospice members will be out and about later this month asking for your support to get sufficient funding so hospices can pay them fairly.

Reference

(1) NZNO (2004)NZNO submission to Parliament's Health Select Committee on Caregivers' Training and Pay. Wellington: NZNO

NZNO industrial adviser Rob Haultain