October 30, 2020

Unions

NSWNMA receives top gong for rapid response to COVID-19 risks 

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The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA) has been recognised for its agile response in supporting its nursing and midwifery members at work on the COVID-19 frontline across NSW.

At the 2020 SafeWork NSW Awards, the NSWNMA received the top union award for ‘Outstanding work health and safety support to members in the changed working environment due to COVID-19’.

Humbled by the accolade, NSWNMA General Secretary, Brett Holmes, said it was recognition of the determination by everyone involved to ensure NSWNMA members across the public, private and aged care sectors were kept up to date as the COVID-19 situation evolved rapidly.

“When the biggest global health pandemic in 100 years is hurtling towards you, you have a duty to your members to ensure they have exactly what they need to be safe in the workplace, but to also maintain the safe care of their patients and residents,” said Mr Holmes.

“We recognised early that access to personal protective equipment (PPE) was a big problem, not just in the public hospital system, but also in the private sector and aged care, so we were quick to open channels of communication and get issues resolved as promptly as possible.

“The issue of fit-testing P2 and N95 masks worn by our members was another major concern and we’ve achieved improvement, with almost all Local Health Districts committing to fit-testing programs in their public hospitals. The increased fit-testing of clinical staff will go beyond COVID-19, improving respiratory protection for nurses long after the virus disappears,” Mr Holmes concluded.

NSWNMA Assistant General Secretary, Judith Kiejda, said the award was testament to the union’s commitment to prioritise member’s issues and secure outcomes, so nurses and midwives can continue their selfless work.

“Access to leave was another issue we were determined to tackle quickly. We wanted to ensure the health and wellbeing of our members was properly considered, given the unknown territory they were working in responding to COVID-19,” said Ms Kiejda.

“Thousands of nurses and midwives were forced to respond rapidly and absorb new workplace policies at short notice. They could not escape it. They have lived, breathed, and continue to work through the pandemic response today.

“We dedicate this award to all the hardworking nurses and midwives of NSW.”

The SafeWork NSW Awards in 2020 recognise excellence and innovation in work health and safety response to COVID-19 across a broad range of industries. #SafeWorkAwards

Trade unions unite to call for investment in care 

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Unions around the world are coming together in a show of strength to call on governments to invest in health and caring industries. 

Led by the International Trade Union Confederation, in association with Public Services International, unions representing workers in health, education and aged care are embarking on a Global Day of Action on 29 October with the rally call of “Invest in Care, NOW!” 

Organisers have said that “The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the devastating effects of decades of under-investment in public health and care systems and the harmful politics of austerity”. 

“The pandemic has underlined the centrality of health and care to our well-being and existence. The need for adequate investment in equitable, quality public health and care systems is more apparent and urgent than ever”. 

The coalition’s demands include investment in quality public healthcare services, more green jobs within so-called caring sectors, and for improved pay and conditions. 

The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association is proud to be part of both the International Trade Union Confederation and Public Services International. To be part of our campaign for quality health services, join us today. 

 

“Be on high alert”: McManus warns of employer-led wage cuts 

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Australian Unions Secretary Sally McManus has warned of an attack on workers’ wages, after key employer groups backed away from a deal struck between unions and the Business Council of Australia (BCA). 

The agreement, which is part of roundtable discussions that have resulted from the industrial conditions brought on by COVID-19, has seen broad support from both workers and business groups. 

However, key employer groups including Australian Industry Group and the Master Builders Association, have rejected the current deal. These groups wanted to include greater “part time flexibility” in the reforms – a move that has been described by unions as “casualisation under another name”. 

“We don’t support that proposal”, Ms McManus said. “It would absolutely mean wages would be cut”. 

The breakdown in negotiations has led to concern that employer groups were now urging Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter to consider proposals outside of the roundtable. This could potentially lead to detrimental conditions being imposed on workers and their unions. 

“Be on high alert,” said Ms McManus. “[Employer groups are now] directly lobbying the government to implement what they wanted all along: cuts to industrial awards”. 

Unionized workers are more likely to assert their right to a safe and healthy workplace

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Associate Professor Aaron Sojourner discusses why unionised workplaces are safer workplaces.

Unionized workers are more likely than their non-union peers to speak up about health and safety problems in the workplace, according to a just-published, peer-reviewed study I conducted with Jooyoung Yang, who was a Ph.D. student in applied economics at the time of the research.

To reach this conclusion, we examined over 70,000 unionization votes from 1985 to 2009 and focused on elections where the tally in favour or against was very small. This allowed us to zero in on the impact of unionization itself on worker behaviour. We then compared these workplaces with the number of inspections conducted by state or federal occupational health and safety enforcement agencies that resulted from an employee complaint. We found that unionized workplaces were 30% more likely to face an inspection for a health or safety violation.

The likely reasons why, in my view, are that unions can help organized workers learn about their rights, file complaints and provide greater protections against illegal retaliation by employers.

Why it matters

The health and safety of workers is always a concern, but the current pandemic makes the issue more important than ever, especially for essential workers in health care, retail and child care centers and schools. But beyond them, all workers – including those with typically safe office jobs – are at increased risk of catching the coronavirus.

The costs of providing sufficient protective gear or taking other steps to ensure worker safety can be high, which means some companies have at times resisted doing all they can to protect their employees. What’s more, they are trying to prevent their workers from learning about cases of coronavirus in their workplace and have been lobbying governments for immunity from any liability.

That means it’s even more vital that workers are able to raise their voices when they feel that their workplace is unsafe. Our research suggests belonging to a union can play a big role in ensuring those voices are heard.

This may also be why we’ve seen more workers going on strike and asserting their rights to safer and healthier workplaces.

Aaron Sojourner, Associate Professor and Labor Economist, University of Minnesota

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Robbed in retirement

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The Morrison government wants to delay the increase in superannuation from 9.5 per cent to 12 per cent – a move that would cost a 30-year-old registered nurse more than $120,000.

On 1 July 2021, your super will increase without you having to do anything.

Unless, that is, an influential group of federal Liberal MPs gets its way and torpedoes the rise.

Increasing employer contributions to super – known as the “super guarantee” – has already been legislated. The super guarantee is scheduled to rise from 9.5 per cent to 10 per cent next year and to 12 per cent by 2025.

The increase was legislated to come into effect in 2015 but was delayed by the Abbott government.

Now Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, and assistant superannuation minister, Jane Hume, have put into doubt the super increases, arguing they are unaffordable and would hurt wages and cost jobs.

A group of Liberal Party back-benchers goes even further. They too have called for the increase in the super guarantee to be delayed or cancelled. But they have also called for super to be optional for workers, or to be used to live on during the coronavirus crisis or to buy a house.

If implemented, these proposals would fundamentally change Australia’s world-respected superannuation system.

The ACTU has calculated a further delay in the super guarantee would cost a 30-year-old registered nurse $121,807 at retirement and a 30-year-old aged care AiN $67,435 in retirement savings.

Employers “are licking their lips”

While these prominent members of the Liberal Party, along with sections of the financial media and business groups, argue a rise in super would lead to lower wages, other economists strongly disagree.

“The argument that if you just give up your super increase, you’ll get more in your pay packet, that’s utopian dreaming. What you will get instead is none of both,” says economist Jim Stanford from the Australia Institute.

He says that the sluggish growth in real wages over the past few years, even though there’s been no increase to super, shows the link doesn’t exist.

The share of profit enjoyed by business owners “has hit all-time records since 2017”, Stanford says.

“Because of the pandemic and how it’s shaped the labour market, I think employers are licking their lips at the prospect of both freezing and restricting wages and restricting super increases.

The Liberals’ “fraudulent argument”

The claim that the super increases are unaffordable has also been rubbished by former prime minister Kevin Rudd.

Rudd labelled it a “fraudulent argument” to claim the super rises would come at the expense of wages. He said wage increases “had been negligible” in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It has no statistical foundation, no logical foundation, no data to support it,” he said.

Experts point out that the scheduled increases are a third of the most recent increase in the minimum wage, and a sixth of the one before that.

Federal politicians have a 15.4 per cent government contribution into their parliamentary retirement accounts.

Work without end

Even though she has been nursing since she was 18 years old, RN (and acting CNC) Jacquie Myers still won’t have enough super to fully retire.

“I started work at 18 years old. I was in the public health sector, so I joined NSW State Super. But back in the 1980s, when I fell pregnant with my children, you could only come back to full-time work. I had to go to private sector work so I could work part-time while I was caring for children. State Super paid me out in 1983; I couldn’t leave my super in there because I wasn’t … in the public sector. They paid seven and a half years’ worth of super into my bank account. My husband was working in the Electricity Commission then, and he was on strike for eight months, and so we had to use that money to live and pay the mortgage and electricity. We had one baby and another one about to be born. We considered ourselves lucky that we got that seven and a half years’ super then. But if I had kept it in State Super, I would have a motza now. Kids today who are in this COVID world, I don’t blame them for dipping into their superannuation. I was in the same situation, and it isn’t fair.

I’m one of about 10 women in a group of friends where we all had our babies in the ’80s, and the only way you could work full-time and have children was to work nights. I didn’t go back to full-time work until my kids were in high school. We don’t have enough to retire on comfortably, so my plan now is that we [myself and my husband] will probably still continue to work part-time. My husband will work part-time as a bus driver and I will do agency work. My friends and I are supposed to be retiring, but we are all doing agency work to make life a little bit more comfortable.”

Super withdrawal scheme puts burden of COVID crisis on the young

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Many experts see the super early release scheme as poor policy.

More than 600,000 young people under the age of 35 have completely drained their superannuation accounts following the introduction of the government’s super early release scheme.

The Morrison government says the early release scheme allows people access to their money to help them in a time of financial hardship.

But Paul Keating, the key architect of compulsory super, says the opposite is true: early access to super savings is not about the government helping people through a time of hardship but about those people helping the government through a time of hardship by shifting much of the cost of stimulus on to workers, particularly the young.

“Of the income support to date, in this COVID emergency, $32 billion has been paid for by the most vulnerable, lowest paid people in the country – that’s the people who have taken $20,000 out – and $30 billion has been provided by the government under JobSeeker and JobKeeper,” he told an Industry Super Australia (ISA) seminar.

According to the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA), Australian workers took more out of their super accounts in the June quarter than what they put in. It is the first time there has been negative net contributions since the compulsory retirement scheme was introduced in 1992.

Matt Linden, deputy chief executive of ISA, says all members of super funds are negatively impacted by the early release scheme, not just those who withdraw from their accounts.

He says super funds have had to “shift their asset allocation from growth assets into cash, which basically earns members nothing, almost nothing” in order to meet the demand for the early release of super.

“No one doubts that there is real financial hardship out there and superannuation has an important role to play – but the system was never designed to be a broad-based social insurance model. The level of contributions to sustainably support that would be at least twice the current levels,” he told The Saturday Paper.

A survey by analytics consultancy Alpha Beta and credit bureau Illion showed that much if not most of the money released under the scheme did not even go towards relieving hardship.

It found 40 per cent of these people saw no drop in their income during the COVID-19 crisis and spent the money on non-essential consumption.

“On average, people withdrew around $8000 and spent an extra $2855 in two weeks, compared with the same group’s average spending in a normal fortnight,” their survey found.

“Sixty-four per cent of the additional spending was on discretionary items such as clothing, furniture, restaurants and alcohol.”

“Asking young people to dip into their super now is a total cop out”

Inadequate super compounds the financial losses from the NSW public sector pay freeze, says RN Annie Smoker.

“Superannuation is not really something that people in their 20s or 30s really think about. In terms of taking out money out of their superannuation during COVID, they might not think of the long-term consequences. They see a dollar figure and think ‘Great, let me access that’ without thinking of the future.

“Then some people wouldn’t feel the pressure to take out their money. It makes me really mad that the government is asking us to go above and beyond in high-risk areas during COVID, while they are not supporting us financially.

“Nurses are really fortunate that we still have jobs, but we shouldn’t have to take on added pressures. The government is giving bonuses and pay rises to people who are already earning over $300,000, but nurses who are on the frontline are being asked to take a pay cut in real terms.

“Asking young people to dip into their super now is a total cop out. This is an economic crisis. The government should be able to manage the budget and pay frontline workers properly. The lost money is noticed by someone who is on $60,000 or $80,000 a year.”