Roche Denise: Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 18 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9164. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): It is my pleasure to take the first call for the Greens on this the third reading of this bill. I just want to go back and restate the purpose of the bill; I think everybody is pretty clear about what it is. It is essentially to give effect to an agreement that has been reached between the unions the home and community support services providers and district health boards to ensure that home support workers are paid for the time spent travelling between their clients. I want to remind this House that this came about as a result of negotiations after a case was taken to the Employment Relations Authority by the Public Service Association (PSA) on behalf of home carers with home carerJenny Goodman fronting that case. I thank her for her efforts and the efforts of the PSA. Essentially it was a test case for something like 20000 home carers. The PSA took this case to say that the travel time between clients was work and that it should be paid for when in most cases that time was not paid for. Essentially the low rates of pay for the home carers would be basically slipping under the minimum wage if you took that time into account.The home carers in this country care for something like 40000 people who are chronically ill are elderly or are people with disabilities. They care for these people in their own homes. We must remember that caring for people in their own homes is actually incredibly good for those clients.It ensures that they have independence and that they have dignity. But we also need to recognise that caring for them in their own home with an underfunded underpaid workforce is much cheaper for our health dollars. Why is it cheaper? It is cheaper because it is built on the exploitation of women workers—carers who invest emotionally in their clients and their clients’ well-being but who are also low-paid and have limited if any guarantee of working hours from one week to the next.Lodging the case with the Employment Relations Authority triggered negotiations because travel time is work—certainly in this situation. For exampleit is like a previous case that the Service and Food Workers Union—or it might have been the Service Workers Union as it was then—had taken with the disability service carers for their sleeping over so that sleepover time was classified as work. That case you may remember resulted in huge back-pay claims for again what was largely a female-dominated workforce.In this case rather than let the Employment Relations Authority make the decision and potentially direct back-pay the Ministry of Health the district health boards home-care support service providers the unions—the PSA E tū and the Council of Trade Unions—sat down to negotiate the settlement. That settlement means that home-care support services and district health board home carers will not get back-pay. That back-pay is estimated to be around $261 million for 6 years—back-pay for all those workers. It is likely that the deal that has now been negotiated for travel time is going to cost around $38 million per year added to the health budget. But I think it is worth it because you cannot rely on exploitation to provide a service.This bill will mean that home carers are paid at least the minimum wage for travel time. They will also be paid a travel allowance of at least 50c per kilometre starting in March this year going up to 60c per kilometre in July. In exchange for this settlement there will be no back-pay travel time payment or travel money. In exchange there is Part B of the settlement agreement which is not covered by this legislation. Part B sets up a director-general’s reference group and I am glad to see that it will be set up. It is outside this legislation. What that director-general’s reference group is set up to do is work alongside the employers the district health boards and the unions and the Council of Trade Unions again to look at a transition to regularising the workforce and for that workforce to transition to regular working hours.It is also to look at safe staffing levels. It is also going to look at training for carers to level 3 up and ensure that that qualification can be attained within the first 2 years. This is because it is not just about the home carers; it is also about the quality of the service that they provide and essentially it is also about those qualifications being recognised as part of the pay scale. That is Part B of the settlement. It was the quid pro quo. I am glad to see that it is going to happen.I think we have to recognise and thank the unions for taking this proactive approach of engaging in a conversation looking at the future—exchanging back-pay compensation for future benefits. I think that is the difference between an industrial relations lawyer who could have taken the case and could have gone for back-pay claims—the difference between that and the unions is that they take the sensible collaborative and collective approach looking for practical and pragmatic solutions. I think we need to note that these benefits will be passed on to home carers who are not union members. It is good that that happens because otherwise they undercut those who are union members. We should really recognise that in lots of different sectors unions negotiate pragmatic deals that benefit their union members but are also passed on to others in the sector. I also think that there are some limitations on whom this bill applies to. We need to be encouraging new home-care support services that may be being set up at the moment and that are not listed to come under this agreement because otherwise they run the risk of undercutting other providers and forcing wages down in the tender process with district health boards.I have to say that the underfunding of the aged-care sector—and others have mentioned this—is an ongoing problem that needs to be resolved. We cannot continue to provide a service that is essentially based on wages that are too low and services that are provided for free by a largely female workforce. I note that the next case being taken is that of Kristine Bartlett and the E tū union—the equal pay claim for a rest home worker. That too is subject to a negotiation by the unions with the ministries to look for a way forward to ensure that we can pass on pay equity to the entire workforce. That is an ongoing situation but I really truly do want to see equal pay for aged-care workers within the next couple of years at least. I will look forward to seeing that legislation come before us. In the meantime I commend this bill to the House.