Different views on aged care industry award

Aged Care Association Australia (ACAA) has expressed disappointment at the Australian Industrial Relations Commission’s decision to maintain a single nursing award as part of the award modernisation process, rather than including them in the draft aged care industry award.

In its draft decision, the commission stated: “…the material advanced suggests at this stage that an occupational award is warranted.

“The award generally applies to nurses wherever employed although nurses employed in secondary schools have been excluded.”

ACAA chief executive officer, Rod Young, said the decision would make it more difficult for providers to establish innovative workforce models.

“In supposedly creating a system of modern awards, the commission has allowed nurses to maintain an occupational award,” he said. “Unfortunately that is not way the industry is structured.

“Having one group of employees in a separate structure will make the industry’s work around negotiations and workforce structure that little bit harder.

“Having a whole-of-industry approach would have made working towards some sort of workforce reform easier.”

However, the decision was welcomed by the Australian Nursing Federation who campaigned heavily for a single nursing award.

The union’s federal secretary, Ged Kearney, expressed a desire to work with the industry to increase the Commonwealth Government’s funding for aged care services.

“We know that a separate aged care industry award would have been a means for [providers] to drive wages down,” she said.

“But we would rather work cooperatively and collaboratively to improve funding and attract skilled staff to the sector.

“We certainly do think there needs to be an injection of funds into the sector and we would like to see that go to wages and salaries.”