Aged care provider Southern Cross Care Tasmania’s ‘disgusting’ move to slash conditions

Unions are up in arms at an “absolutely brazen” draft enterprise agreement from the state's biggest aged care provider, which proposes a “paltry” pay rise while removing paid meal breaks and cutting penalty rates.

Tasmania’s biggest aged care provider is proposing to slash employee conditions, in a move one union boss has labelled “disgusting”.

Southern Cross Care Tasmania (SCC) is one of the state’s largest employers, with more than 1300 full-time and part-time employees. It operates nine aged care homes and 14 assisted-living and in-home care services across the state.

In the wake of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which handed down its final report and recommendations in February, SCC has presented a new draft enterprise agreement to the Health and Community Services Union and the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation.

It proposes to remove 30-minute paid meal breaks, cut Sunday penalty rates from double time to time-and-three-quarters, and reduce night shift penalties from 19 per cent to 10-15 per cent and afternoon shift penalties from 15 per cent to 10-12.5 per cent.

HACSU Tasmania state secretary Tim Jacobson said SCC’s bid to remove certain conditions was “absolutely brazen”.

“It’s disgusting … that an employer would look to, in essence, take money out of already (underpaid) workers’ pockets … at a time when everyone knows … that to get good quality care in the aged care industry back, we need to pay workers more, not less,” he said.

The draft agreement, seen by the Mercury, outlines a 1.5 per cent wage rise each year for three years, starting from the first pay period after December 1, 2021. Inflation is currently at 1.1 per cent.

Under the new arrangement, the lowest-paid SCC employees - classified as band one - would next year be paid $21.67 an hour, which is $1.34 more than Australia’s minimum wage. As at December 2023, these employees would earn $22.33 an hour.

It comes after the royal commission found that the aged care sector had difficulty attracting and retaining staff due to low wages and poor employment conditions, and recommended increases to award wages.

A spokesperson for SCC said its employees were “highly valued” and that it would not be commenting publicly on the specifics of the draft agreement while negotiations were ongoing.

“(SCC) is committed to reaching a fair agreement with all our employees through the negotiation process,” the spokesperson said.

“While we have a longstanding and productive relationship with both unions, we do not agree on everything. We have consulted extensively with them to date and we are positive our differences will be resolved through the negotiation process. We look forward to working with them to reach a fair and reasonable agreement.”

ANMF Tasmanian branch secretary Emily Shepherd described the proposed wage increase as “paltry” and said that the loss of conditions would ultimately reduce employees’ take-home pay.

“SCC can afford to advertise their facilities and tout their services but are apparently unwilling to ensure fair conditions for nurses and care staff who deliver those services and care for residents,” Ms Shepherd said.

“(SCC) seem to be telling the aged care workforce that they are not an employer of choice and that they are not willing to put their residents’ care needs first as it is the nurses and care staff who provide this care.”

Critically low staff levels at core of aged-care disgrace

A WOMAN who is watching her mother spend the last days of her life in a Hobart aged-care home says chronic understaffing means residents miss out on the compassionate care they deserve and workers feel helpless.

Merridy Eastman gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which released its harrowing final report on Monday.

She is back in Hobart to be by her mother’s side.

Best selling author and Packed to the Rafter actor Merridy Eastman. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

“Understaffing is just one of the issues that came up repeatedly in the royal commission,” she said.

“But if the government throws money at the sector without making providers accountable for how they spend it, nothing will change.

“The understaffing will continue, and so will the bad reputations of the homes, and a culture of neglect.”

The report found elderly Australians are starving, dying in pain and suffering assaults in neglectful nursing homes and suggests a levy on taxpayers to boost aged-care funding.

Scott Morrison pledged an extra $452m for aged care this year after reading the report’s evidence of “sad and confronting’’ abuse and neglect affecting one in three nursing home residents.

Wal (now deceased) and Berenice Eastman in relation to the Aged Care Royal Commission in Hobart. Daughter Merridy Eastman gave evidence. Picture: SUPPLIED

The Prime Minister was “quite attracted’’ to the royal commission recommendation for paid carer’s leave, so workers could take time off to care for elderly or ailing parents. He said the government would consider all 148 recommendations, which include a Medicare-style levy on taxpayers to increase aged-care funding beyond the current $20bn a year.

In a distressing 2733-page report in eight volumes, commissioners Tony Pagone, QC, and Lynelle Briggs concluded “substandard care and abuse pervades the Australian aged-care system’’. They warned at least one in three aged-care residents have suffered “substandard care’’, which had become “normalised’’ in some nursing homes.

As many as one in five residents had been assaulted in a nursing home. The report reveals many residents are malnourished and left to sit in their own faeces like babies because staff are too busy to take them to the toilet.

The two-year inquiry exposed “numerous instances’’ of residents given the wrong medicine or left to suffer in pain with untreated pressure sores and skin wounds.

The report says the “core business’’ of aged care should be to care for people with dementia — half of all residents — and those needing palliative care before they die.

Radical recommendations for reform include mandatory quotas of properly trained staff, with at least one nurse on duty at any time to provide guaranteed hours of care for each resident.

The report calls for a new Australian Aged Care Commission, with separate agencies for pricing, quality and safety, and an Inspector-General of Aged Care. It wants a stronger Aged Care Act with a legal duty for aged-care providers to provide “high-quality and safe care’’.

Merridy Eastman. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

Ms Eastman said elderly people should be enjoying their old age, not barely surviving it, and stressed-out workers were being mistreated too. She said she had seen the very best of the staff at her mum’s Southern Cross home.

“But at the same time, I’ve had carers and nurses tell me how stressed they are due to understaffing. It means both sides suffer.”

She said there had been only one carer rostered on in each of the home’s three buildings on Monday night and only one nurse looking after every resident in all three buildings. “I was so glad I was here with our mum. But what if I hadn’t been.”

Ms Eastman, a best-selling author and actor who starred in Packed to the Rafters, told the royal commission that when her father, Walter, was still alive, her frail mother, Berenice, often had to help him toilet and wash because he was not being tended by staff.