The power to win equal pay – summing up ANMF’s recent pay wins for nurses, midwives and carers

In late August, ANMF (Vic Branch) Acting Assistant Secretary Samantha Casey was part of a panel – alongside Jo Briskey of the United Workers Union and the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ Sascha Peldova-McClelland – at the Victorian Trades Hall Council’s Women’s Rights at Work conference (WRAW Con), speaking on the topic of ‘the power to win: equal pay’.

Sam shared with attendees the ANMF’s progress in the federal aged care work value case and its intersection with the 2024 state public sector EBA campaign, and the history-making strategy used in both.

‘As a nurse,’ Sam began, ‘I pursued a vocation that has a historical construction as work done by women, tied to historic perceptions that care is an innate feminine characteristic. The reality of course being that nursing, midwifery and care work requires a high level of learned and developed skill, professionalism and responsibility.’

It remains work predominately done by women, Sam noted, necessitating that ANMF ask two important questions as it was prosecuting its cases:

1. how do we value and understand this work?
2. how do we recognise it?

ANMF’s federal award case

Beginning with ANMF’s federal aged care work value case, Sam noted that our application to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to increase the Nurses Award rates by 25 per cent stemmed from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety finding that ‘the bulk of the aged care workforce does not receive wages and enjoy terms and conditions of employment that adequately reflect the important caring role they play.’

ANMF’s case to vary wage rates in the award was thus designed to:

1. reflect the work value of aged care employees in accordance with section 158 of the Fair Work Act
2. ensure equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal or comparable value.

‘Employer reps didn’t collaborate, nor did the Morrison Government,’ Sam wryly noted. A change in government meant that we were able to work with them, to secure agreement to fund the outcome of this case.’

There were a few years of ‘evidence and submissions and witnesses’, Sam continued, describing what was required for ANMF to successfully argue the case, which resulted in the FWC’s interim decision in November 2022 to increase wages for aged care nurses and care workers by 15 per cent, followed by its March 2024 decision for all aged care workers except nurses to receive a total wage increase of 23 per cent (inclusive of the 15 per cent from the interim decision).

Noting that we are still waiting for the final decision for the nurses – expected to be higher than 23 per cent – Sam detailed the evidence that persuaded the Commission that change was justified:

1. historical undervaluation and gender-based assumptions
2. invisible skills
3. changes in work value.

Historical undervaluation

‘Work performed by women historically only needed to remunerate them for food and lodging if they weren’t married or living with their parents,’ Sam noted. ‘Work in nursing and aged care was viewed as charity. Women’s role as parents and carers and the ones undertaking a majority of unpaid labour in caring responsibilities also contributed.

‘These historical gender-based assumptions had never been addressed and so this was reflected in the award rates.’

Invisible skills

‘The invisibility of this work needed to be appropriately identified and codified,’ Sam continued, ‘and that’s where the work of Associate Professor Anne Junor came in and the use of the “spotlight tool”, which looked at those hidden, under-specified, under-defined and under-codified skills.

‘Any nurse or midwife knows these complexities, but we didn’t have methodology to codify it. For example, showering a patient and inspecting their skin whilst talking to them about their family and assessing their neurological and mental health status, providing dignity and facilitating autonomy, coordinating that interaction and care. There is significant knowledge and skill to do that. Especially in the context of responsibility for quality of life and death.

‘The employers claimed that the work of a personal care worker was routine. But Associate Professor Anne Junor said these skills are not in the awards, and thus they have been overlooked: “If they can’t be recognised, they cannot be valued. If they are not valued, then they are not brought to bear in assessing the work value of given work. There is every reason to think, then, that these skills have not been taken into account in previous work value assessments, and the employer parties point to no reason for thinking that they have been taken into account.”

Changes in work value

Sam then outlined how the work itself has changed over the last 20 or so years, including:

• higher acuity, lower staffing levels and change to skill mix
• changes in the way care is delivered and regulation
• increases in the need for certain skills (dementia care, palliative care)
• increased incidence of occupational violence and aggression
• changes in technology
• changes in infection prevention and control.

ANMF’s Victorian public sector EBA outcome

‘This all got really interesting for ANMF’s Victorian Branch,’ Sam continued, ‘when we were negotiating the public sector nurses and midwives’ agreement for about 60,000 members, including aged care nurses.

‘It became apparent during negotiations, with the FWC foreshadowing its decision, that those federal award rates – which usually lagged behind our state public sector agreement rates – would actually overtake the entry level agreement rates for nurses. And not just the entry level rate, but some way into the hard fought for and fiercely protected classification career structure in the public sector agreement. There would, therefore, be a huge impact on nurses’ and midwifes’ career structure in Victoria if we didn’t lift the entire career structure to reflect the entry level wage uplifts mandated by the award.

‘This created a really interesting lever in bargaining,’ Sam noted, which was pivotal to securing wage increases above the state government’s wages policy of 3 per cent. ‘It created the lever,’ she concluded, ‘but the way that we actually got this over the line was the strength and solidarity of our members, taking really fierce industrial action including closing beds, which is not something nurses and midwives do lightly.

That action, combined with the implications of ANMF’s award case and its intersection with the EBA outcomes, saw members lock in a 28.4 per cent wage increase over four years ‘not just for nurses in aged care and entry level nurses and midwives but for all nurses and midwives, right through the career structure’.