Roche Denise: Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 13 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7149. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): Tēnā koutou katoa. I rise to take the first call for the Greens on the Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill. We will be supporting the bill.What this bill does is it basically implements the settlement between the Crown the district health boards the providers of home and community-based care and support services and the unions of home support staff—the Public Service Association (PSA) and the Service and Food Workers Union—over the payment for the time spent by home support workers travelling between clients. It follows on from a claim that was filed with the Employment Relations Authority by the unions that time spent travelling between clients by home support workers should be paid for at at least the minimum wage of $14.75 an hour. Essentially this is legislation to replace litigation.According to the regulatory impact statement this settlement will affect around 28000 carers the majority of whom are women who work as home support and work in people’s homes. They ensure that people who are frail or elderly or who have disabilities can be looked after in their own homes and apparently there are around 40000 of those clients being cared for every year.Home support carers provide really good value for money. It is cheaper for our health system for people to stay in their own homes rather than in hospital and it is better for the client to maintain as much autonomy as possibility and just have some help while they are in their own home. So it is depressing to say the least that that value-for-money option—that cheaper option than hospital—has been achieved in part by reducing the cost of the labour provided by carers to the extent that our minimum employment standards around wages have been breached.Carers and their unions have known for decades that the work they perform has been underpaid. We knew it in 2002 when I was a caregiver with the Waiheke Health Trust and even way back in the 1980s when I was a carer with the Nurse Maude District Nursing Association in Christchurch.In May 2012 Dr Judy McGregor Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner with the Human Rights Commission reported on basically the exploitation of women who are carers in her report called Caring Counts: Report of the Inquiry into the Aged Care Workforce. As part of that research for her report she worked undercover in an aged-care facility and she graphically outlined how physically and emotionally exhausting the work is. The reason—and she has said it too—that there is a very low pay rate for carers is that it is seen as women’s work and consequently it is undervalued.She made 10 recommendations. The first five are that the Government show leadership to deliver better services for older people; that the woefully low pay rates be addressed and as a minimum there should be pay parity in Government-funded service providers in the aged-care sector—including home support—between people working in home support and residential facilities and people working for district health boards; that there is a fair and consistent travel policy covering actual costs for the time spent travelling between clients; that there be a commitment to qualifications for staff in the sector and a commitment by employers to this as well; and that the voluntary safety standards including the Home and community support sector Standard become compulsory. There are another five recommendations as well.It is a credit to the unions of the people who work as home support carers that in negotiating this settlement they have attempted to address the recommendations outlined all those years ago by Dr Judy McGregor. They have also had to take groundbreaking court cases to try to address those recommendations. The Service and Food Workers Union—or now E tū union—and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation are taking the case for carer Kristine Bartlett under the Equal Pay Act and of course the PSA and the Service and Food Workers Union have taken the case for payment for travel time for home carers on behalf of Tamara Baddeley and Jenny Goodman. This legislation underscores how important the union movement is for protecting and enforcing people’s wages and conditions on the job not just for their members but for whole sectors. It is sad that it had to take legal action for the barest of equality to start to be negotiated and to be addressed in this House.The legal case for payment for travel time triggered real discussion and negotiation with the Crown for a fair outcome for home support carers that takes into account the chronic underfunding of the sector the need for quality care for those receiving home support and also the need for stability in the workforce. I note that as part of this deal carers will not be able to claim back payment as would be expected in a legal case. According to the regulatory impact statement that back payment for 6 years could be as much as $261 million. Carers have foregone that because they want an agreement that will benefit themselves their clients the service providers—which are the employers—the district health boards and the Government. They have sacrificed past claims to create a better future for all of them.The deal the union negotiated includes as well as the payment for travel time payment to cover the cost of mileage at 50c a kilometre from March next year and 60c a kilometre from July next year. That is up from an average of 33c a kilometre. It also includes a transition to guaranteed hours of work. It also calls for clients to be allocated safe staffing levels training for carers to a level 3 qualification within the first 2 years on the job and of course pay rates that are better than the minimum wage and where qualifications are recognised on the pay scale.These are all incredibly important aspects of the deal. The transition to guaranteed hours of work means an end to zero-hour contracts for home carers and it means there will be stability around their earnings. They will be able to plan their lives. Hopefully this will also start to address the horrendously high staff turnover in the sector which I read is as much as 40 percent. It makes sense to invest in rewarding carers who have achieved their qualifications so that there is an incentive to upskill.The Government cannot continue to underfund home support work at the level of the minimum wage and it is time to recognise the current and growing level of skill needed because carers are dealing with increasingly complex needs. It is going to cost about $38 million a year and it is good to see that the Crown has allocated this to district health boards which will send it out to the service providers which will pass it on to the carers themselves.We support this bill. We also acknowledge that this will pave the way for ACC-funded carers to start to see some equity in their payments. This deal is starting to make an impact right now. The PSA journal last month had interviews with two carers who talked about the increase in their take-home pay as a result of finally—finally—being paid their travel time. Thank you.