Around 1,000 early learning educators marked International Women’s Day by walking off the job to protest their low pay. It was the latest action in United Voice’s Big Steps campaign, which is demanding the federal government fund a wage increase for workers in the sector.
Staff at the Dawson Street Child Care Cooperative in Brunswick, in Melbourne’s inner north, were joined by around 200 others in a spirited protest to the Brunswick Town Hall. The most popular chant of the day was a message for the prime minister: “Hey Malcolm, listen up, educators are standing up!”
More than 95 percent of childcare workers in Australia are women. Despite their qualifications, many earn just $20 an hour. According to the union, this is half the average national wage.
Child care is a $12 billion a year industry, made up of 10,000 government-approved providers that employ 170,000 workers. Despite rising fees, wages remain paltry.
Narelle Lawton, United Voice member and director at Dawson Street, said the low wage offered to early childhood educators shows that their skills are undervalued. “We are not babysitters, we are educators”, she said in a speech to the rally. 
Dee Suvanmani, a kindergarten teacher, told Red Flag: “We receive a third less than all other educators in the education industry, so that’s a significant gap. So basically Malcolm Turnbull needs to stop separating professions because of gender; everyone should be treated equally. We spend a lot of time with these children, we are shaping them. These guys are going to be the next leaders. They are going to be the next educators. I don’t want to tell my kids you can’t follow your dreams to be an educator like me, because of the low pay, you won’t be able to live with a mortgage, or live comfortably and go on holidays”. 
A worker at Dawson Street had a simple message for Malcolm Turnbull: “We need more and we need it now!”

Lauren Stevenson

‘We are not babysitters, we are educators!’

As the former job rep at the Monash Gardens nursing home, I attended the Victorian ANMF’s annual delegates’ conference on 26 and 27 June.
Assistant State Secretary Pip Carew delivered the report on aged care, mentioning the gallant struggle against privatisation of Monash Gardens. After a 10 month battle with the local council, Monash Gardens was sold to Royal Freemasons, which took over in May.
The report included a painful reminder of the human cost of running aged care for profit. We were told of the recent Coroner’s Court finding in the case of Norma Bensley, 92, who died in February 2009 at the privately run Templestowe Pioneer’s Village. A newly qualified nurse was on her first solo shift and was responsible for medicating 49 residents. Being short staffed that day meant the nurse was also monitoring residents in a communal area.
This impossible workload led to a fatal medication error. The Coroner found that “systems error” led to Mrs Bensley’s death. The kind of “systems error” that means care staff are not replaced when they call in sick is rampant in aged care, causing additional injury and fatalities. Unfortunately, it is rarely considered newsworthy.
The conference was addressed by Victorian Health Minister David Davis, who assured us that 535 of the promised 800 beds for Victorian hospitals had been delivered. This is untrue: there have only been 35 additional beds, and this only because Albury is being included in the Victorian figures in the latest statistics.
Between sessions, delegates discussed shared problems: understaffing, management rationing, and fears about the changes to Medicare were common themes. The most disappointing aspect of the conference was that these discussions weren’t reflected much in the conference sessions. 
We had two sessions about doorknocking in marginal seats, but nothing on how 70,000 Victorian ANMF members could mobilise our strength in industrial and political action to meet the serious challenges we face.

Nurses’ delegates discuss challenges

Residents and workers at Monash Gardens and Elizabeth Gardens aged care facilities, in Melbourne’s south-east, are still locked in a battle with the Monash City Council over plans to privatise both.
In October, Monash Council voted to proceed with the sale in spite of significant community opposition. In a historic stance, Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation members at the facilities last week resolved to fight to maintain the present staffing levels and skills mix, regardless of any sale.
The quality of care provided at the facilities is regarded as among the best in the state. This is due in large part to decent staffing numbers in these council-owned homes.
Private aged care providers, both for-profit and not-for-profit, generally reduce staff numbers in order to lower running costs. The result is unreasonable workloads, leading to poor quality care and neglect of the elderly.
Union members will demand that the council make a contractual guarantee of its promise to keep the same standard of care. It is important that the ANMF has thrown its considerable weight behind the campaign.

ANMF member

ANMF members fight to retain aged care staffing

The federal government is considering the introduction of a fee to visit a GP, undermining the Medicare bulk billing system which makes it possible to go to the doctor without paying upfront. Any attack on Medicare will end up targeting people who can least afford to pay: the poor, working class, students, the unemployed, single parents and pensioners.
Many people from these groups already struggle to access the medical care they require. Even the Australian Medical Association opposes this “GP tax”. It points out that socially disadvantaged people already use primary health care less than they need, and are more likely to end up in emergency care as a result.
The attack has been proposed by the health industry bosses’ think tank, the Australian Centre for Health Research – which also proposes abolishing the federal department of health and ageing and privatising much of the health care system. The government’s Commission of Audit will reportedly make its recommendations on the proposal in March.
Health minister Peter Dutton has already sought to justify the fee, stating that “it's hard to understand where we are going to find money to pay for these services”.
Workers need to reject this crap. The measure would cut Medicare outlays by $750 million over four years. Yet the government gifts more than $4 billion in tax breaks and subsidies to the mining industry every year! According to the Treasury, tax concessions on superannuation will cost the government some $45 billion in 2014/15 – around half of that forgone revenue is paid out to the richest 20 percent of income earners.
If the government is short of money it should stop giving handouts to the ultra wealthy, rather than attack the poor.

‘We are not babysitters, we are educators!’

Nurses’ delegates discuss challenges

ANMF members fight to retain aged care staffing

Government gearing up to attack Medicare

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