Aged care staff to get paid pandemic leave

Aged care workers will be entitled to two weeks’ paid leave if they are required to self-isolate due to COVID-19 under a new ruling.

Aged care workers across Australia will be entitled to paid pandemic leave in a bid to encourage them to stay home if they have symptoms and avoid further outbreaks in care homes that are proving deadly in Victoria.

The Fair Work Commission’s (FWC) new scheme will come into force from Wednesday and will apply to residential aged care employees covered by the aged care, nurses and health professionals awards.

Workers must be 17 or older and likely to have worked during the self-isolation period. They cannot be receiving any income — including other leave or JobKeeper — during their time in quarantine, and if they’re told to isolate by a doctor and not by the Government or employer they must provide a medical certificate, the commission says.

If workers test positive to the virus they will be provided with workers compensation leave, which will replace the pandemic leave.

Aged care workers across Australia will be entitled to paid pandemic in a bid to encourage them to stay home if they have symptoms. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

The ruling also only applies to casual employees who work on a “regular and systematic” basis and will last for three months.

Payment would be based on their average earnings over the past six weeks.

In April the commission decided to grant paid pandemic leave to other sectors working under 99 different awards, which prompted unions to argue paid entitlements should be offered to healthcare and aged care workers.

The move was rejected in July, but the severity of the issue in Victoria encouraged FWC to revisit the case.

“In a decision issued on July 8 (8 July decision) we determined that we would not at that time grant the applications made by a number of unions to vary identified “health awards” to provide for paid pandemic leave,” the commission said.

“On a fairly fine balance, we determined that we were not at that time satisfied that the grant of the unions’ application was necessary to achieve the modern awards objective in s 134(1) of the FW Act.”

Given the outbreak at aged care facilities, predominantly in Melbourne, the commission gave the matter ‘’urgent’’ consideration.

“It cannot be assumed that the current outbreak will remain confined to Victoria,” FWC said in its ruling.

“The recent events in that state demonstrate how rapidly circumstances can change,” the full bench of the commission found.

The ruling also only applies to casual employees who work on a ‘regular and systematic’ basis and will last for three months. Picture: David Caird

“Recent developments in New South Wales are not encouraging. The award of the entitlement remains necessary notwithstanding that the current locus of the pandemic is in Victoria.”

The news comes as the aged care watchdog put St Basil’s aged care home in Fawkner, Melbourne, on notice as residents are evacuated from the coronavirus-plagued facility.

Health Minister Greg Hunt on Tuesday confirmed the federal agency was investigating the home.

Almost 700 of the cases in Victoria are in aged care with 84 of those from St Basil’s.

Mr Hunt told ABC Breakfast that all staff were instructed to immediately isolate by the Victorian Public Health Unit, and emergency staff had been brought in.

“Seventy-nine of 115 residents have now been transferred,” Mr Hunt said.

“Our role is to make sure that those remaining residents are safe, and the advice that I had as of late last night and early this morning is that the conditions are stable. The staffing is led by a very experienced nurse unit manager.”