Wages for Aged Care Workers to Rise 28 Percent After Ruling

Hundreds of thousands of aged care workers across Australia will receive a pay rise of up to nearly 30 percent. On March 15, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) issued a ruling on a 2020 application by the Health Services Union (HSU) to lift the wages of workers across the board by an average of 25 percent. According to the ruling (pdf), the FWC found that the work of aged-care employees had historically been undervalued because of gender bias, and that there were “work value reasons” for the minimum wage of direct care employees to be increased by more than 15 percent. As such, the Commission decided to raise the pay rates of personal carers by 18 to 28.5 percent (depending on workers’ qualifications) and those of nursing support workers by 18 to 24.5 percent....