by frog
The Greens support the campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour. But ACC clearly does not, and is proposing to cut the effective wages of home care workers who look after injured people to even less than the current minimum wage of $12.50 an hour.
Currently, ACC reimburses the travel costs of home care workers who have to travel more than 20km to provide support for an injured person in his or her home. However, they now propose to make the home care worker cover the cost of the first 20km of travel, however far they have to go to get to the home of the person they are caring for.
According to Richard Wagstaff, General Secretary of the PSA, home care workers are paid as little as $14.14 an hour. They are also paid only half their hourly rate for driving time. The changes in travel reimbursement could cost them up to 19% of their income. That means they could end up on an effective wage of as little as $11.45 an hour – that’s over $1 an hour less than the current minimum wage – after their travel costs are taken into account.
And it is not just the caregivers who will suffer. Injured people who live in isolated areas are likely to find it increasingly difficult to find any caregiver prepared to travel to their home to provide the home help or attendant care they need.
But do ACC care? Seems not.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Health & Wellbeing by frog on Tue, November 10th, 2009
Tags: ACC, ACC cuts, home care, Minimum wage, PSA, Richard Wagstaff
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
I thought the Nat’s were supposed to be representing the rural vote?
Obviously, they don’t regard those who are incapacitated by their working environment to be part of their constituency…
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On the one side, if the travel is a requirement of the job then they should be getting paid at least minimum wage for the travel and should not have to pay for the costs of that travel. On the other side, pretty much every worker has to travel to get to work and these workers tend not to get paid for their travel time and tend not to have their fuel expenses paid for. Its difficult to work out which it should be. Though I would suggest that if the individual is employed by a body and is assigned to an individual then the actual place of employment is seperate from the place of work and thus the travel is an in-work expense and should be paid for. If it is, however, that they are employed specifically for that patient or effectivly by that patient but paid by ACC then that house becomes the place of work and the place of employment and thus they should not be paid. It is ultimately an arbitary distinction but points to a rather large discrepancy.
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Trevor.
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This does not seem unfair in one way – everyone travels to work at their own expense (in their own time and the cost is out of their wages).
But, I suspect the time compensation developed because of the multiple journeys, to such an extent that travel was part of the job time, so in that case it is unfair.
The ILO takes a dim view of anyone being required to work below the legal minimum wage.
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@Trevor29:
Often home care workers see 3 or 4 clients a day, doing 1 or two hours work for each – just doing the household tasks that the injured person can’t do such as vacuuming, laundry, bedmaking etc. In cases of very serious injuries, however, an injured person who needs constant care can be provided with 24 hour attendant care. My understanding where a caregiver sees several different people in one day, the 20km applies to each trip.
@SPC:
I think the way they get around the minimum wage issue is by arguing that the caregiver is not actually working when they are travelling between the homes of the people they care for, so what they are being paid for that time is an allowance, rather than a wage.
And speaking of the ILO (although slightly off topic) New Zealand continues to be in breach of ILO Convention 17 by requiring injured workers to pay co-payments for the cost of treatment for work injuries, and the Government’s moves to reintroduce co-payments for physiotherapy will make us even less compliant with that convention. It might be worthwhile making a complaint to the ILO on that issue.
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A good point about the longer hospital stays – I didn’t think of that one.
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They have the Dubya constituency, “the haves and have mores”
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Toad
Is there compensation for the costs of the travel itself – petrol, car insurance and depreciation on a work related vehicle?
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I do wish Green would stop being so pretend-pious about the poor workers and how they ought to be given more. Can anyone, anywhere, really believe this stuff?
I know that is the classic leftwing strategy for attracting votes, get on your soapbox and offer extra cash to people too stupid to understand the unwritten agenda, but honestly! Green is supposed to be more intelligent than that. All this piteous wailing is not necessary.
The answer lies in their own hands. Either drop that job and get another, or start their own little business.
What is to stop any homecare worker from starting their own little homecare service business? It takes: one bucket, four cleaning rags, and a pencil and slips of paper to put in letterboxes. Then they can raise their income to $20 per hour, easy. Many home cleaners charge a lot more than that.
And … puh-lease! No marches down the street asking for government start-up grants and job creation subsidies. Anybody who is too witless or lazy to get out there with a bucket and cloth and slip Work Skills Offered notes into every letterbox is, frankly, not worthy of support.
As for the ILO, I’m waiting to see how much it does for the REALLY poor people, the ones on a dollar a day or less, who are barely managing to eat.
And the ACC – oh, mercy, don’t get me started.
What, you actually WANT that foul scheme, which is the joy of every drug company from Honolulu to Hong Kong, because it makes kiwis into helpless experimental subjects??? They can use their doctor force to dish out any drug, any at all and, no matter how destructive and deadly the outcome, we cannot sue them.
Oh, what happy little drug company executives the New Zealand ACC scheme makes them.
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