Bill Kelty in accord with $10bn childcare vow

Former ACTU boss Bill Kelty has backed Bill Shorten’s $10 billion pledge to subsidise childcare workers’ pay.

Former ACTU chief Bill Kelty.

Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty has backed Bill Shorten’s $10 billion wage subsidy promise to childcare workers, declaring the policy would lift the wages of a “grossly underpaid” group, have a negligible impact on aggregate wages and not result in pay claims by other employees.

Mr Kelty, who led the trade union movement from 1983 to 2000, said the policy was entirely consistent with the approach taken by Labor and the unions during the Accord years, citing support by the ALP and unions for nurses to receive significant pay rises in 1985 and 1986.

“Nurses got professional pay and the community said, ‘yes, that’s OK, the game’s up, thanks very much for being such nice people, for looking after us for nothing’,’’ Mr Kelty told The Australian.

“It’s the same here. Childcare workers are miserably paid. It’s not by chance the best education systems in the world pay their teachers well, pay their childcare workers well, and start early.

“It’s a good decision because they are grossly underpaid and undervalued in the community. Their market is largely set by the government anyway. It’s nonsense to say the government is interfering in the private sector.”

Mr Shorten has promised to lift wages of childcare workers by $11,000 over eight years, saying childcare was a “unique” sector and the funding model was a “template we will only use in childcare”.

But he has left open the possibility of government-funded pay rises for aged-care workers after the aged-care royal commission makes its findings, scheduled for April 30 next year.

Mr Kelty said the $10bn cost of the policy would “make a marginal difference to the total wage economy therefore it has no long-term fiscal impact”.

“The reality is it will have a tiny impact,’’ he said. “It is a mechanism over a long period of time. It doesn’t lead to any flow-on anywhere. What is does is (ensure) an orderly progression and the rectification of a terrible anomaly in our community.

“Essentially, that anomaly is driven by the long-term impact of women doing the work.”

“It’s not contrary to the Accord, it’s consistent with it. The Accord did it, we did it with professional nurses. We started the game.

“But … it’s got nothing to do with whether you have an Accord, it’s got to do with something very simple: do you think over generations that women should continue to be discriminated against in terms of jobs because they’re women?

“The second thing you say is, we have looked at the rest of the world and the best education systems have early childcare as an educative process and they recruit good teachers for that function. So when the best education systems … have early education as part of it, why wouldn’t you look at it?”