Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill

I am very pleased to take a call in the Committee stage of this very important bill, the Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill. This is a bill that has been in gestation for quite some time. It arises from work that the Human Rights Commission did in a ruling it gave some years ago, saying that the time spent travelling between clients by home and community support workers should be remunerated. This happened, as I said, several years ago. But it all really started when a member of the New Zealand Public Service Association (PSA) Jenny Goodman and the PSA took a test case to claim on behalf of hundreds of fellow home-care workers.

So the genesis of the settlement came from a brave woman standing up and being prepared to say: “I will take this case with the backing of my union.” I commend the PSA for backing Jenny and taking this case. So when you hear criticisms of unions you have to say that they are misinformed, because this really shows the power of a union backing its workers to get justice, and to get the right outcome for very vulnerable workers. You cannot get much more vulnerable workers than those who work in this area.

So what has happened in this settlement is that the unions and the employers sat down and they worked together. It is an agreement between the Crown, the district health boards, the providers of the home and community-based care and support services, and certain unions. They came up with the settlement. They worked through this settlement to address what is now a historic underpayment of home and community support workers. It was not an easy process for them because they had to come to an agreement and come forward with what they believed would be a satisfactory resolution to this issue. What they have arrived at in this bill has been supported by the employers, and in my second reading speech I read out a number of the submissions provided by those employers, who said that they totally support this bill. It has been arrived at by the unions who were involved, by the district health boards, and by the Crown, and I give credit to all of them for the work that they have done in coming to this settlement.

The objective of this legislation is to ensure that these employees will be compensated in accordance with this bill, at the minimum wage, for qualifying travel time from 1 March 2016; that they will compensated, at no less than 50c per kilometre, for qualifying travel costs, as prescribed by regulation; that the employees will abandon any claim under the Minimum Wage Act 1983 for payment for travel between clients undertaken by them before the enactment of this bill, and after its commencement are prevented from bringing a claim that travel between clients is work under the Minimum Wage Act; and that following the commencement of the bill, any prior agreement between the employees and the employer relating to travel by the employee would be unenforceable.

So, really, this is a settlement to deal with this particular issue, these particular workers, and these particular companies. What it does is ensure that when these workers—and they are overwhelmingly women—go out and perform their role in the home and the community, they are paid when they travel between one client and the next, and I have already set out the arrangement for paying them. But when you think about it, why should these women—nearly all of them on the minimum wage—then pay for their travel to go and provide that service, that vital service, to vulnerable New Zealanders, mainly older New Zealanders, wanting to stay and live in their homes?

What we heard about at the select committee, and debated here in the House with the first and the second readings, is that we have other workers who go out and provide services to clients—they could be the local electrician, or the local plumber—and they include in their costs the cost of travel between clients. But not for these employees, and it just seems shameful to me that in their old cars, using their petrol, they were expected to pay to go and provide this service on the minimum wage. I do not believe that there are many New Zealanders out there who have been the beneficiaries—or their parents, or their grandparents have been the beneficiaries—of home care and community support who would not have supported such an approach to ensure that those workers are funded and that they are provided with the appropriate travel for this very important role.

But I have to say that it is not the end of the work that needs to be done. This is a settlement that deals with this particular issue, but it does not deal—and it has been said in the second reading, and I have said it myself—with the historic underpayment of these workers in terms of what wages they are paid. I do not believe that the minimum wage—and this is based on payment of the minimum wage—is good enough for this work. We are going to need literally tens of thousands of home and community workers to provide our health services within the community over the next few years.

As our population ages, as more old people want to stay in their homes and have their health care provided very close to where they live—if not where they have lived for many years—then we are going to need more of these workers. They are a very valuable workforce for us and we are going to need thousands of them. This settlement deals with part of what we want to do, but it does not address the need for us to have a better agreement in terms of what happens to these people in the future in terms of their wages. In fact, this bill does not deal with what is called Part B of the settlement. That has not been dealt with at all.

Part B of the settlement agreement is about the establishment of a regularised workforce and a review of the home and community health sector. That is not included in it, but it is raised and I notice that we have officials who came to the Health Committee and we questioned them on this issue and the need to have a well-trained workforce. That work, I know, is now under way and is going to be very important in the future.

The other thing I wanted to mention is something that was actually added by the select committee. This was a select committee that worked very, very hard on this bill and worked across all parties. We wanted to do it as quickly as possible. We have brought this bill back to the House in very quick time so that we can get this settlement in place, knowing how important it is. So working very closely together we agreed on all the amendments, and one of them was to include the Accident Compensation Corporation in the bill.

ACC is included in the bill because the home and community support workforce provides services under contract to ACC. So it is mentioned in this bill, and as part of the settlement a similar arrangement between the home-care support employees and the ACC will be negotiated. I think that was a very good inclusion in the bill by the select committee. Otherwise we would have continued with what we often do in New Zealand—have a two-tier system. Those who are covered by ACC often get a much better deal than those who are covered by Vote Health. This is helpful in sorting that out because they are now included in it.

The Labour Party fully supports this bill. I am glad it is being taken as one question. The main part of this bill is in the second part, and by including it all together we are able to have this wide-ranging debate. We fully support it and look forward to its implementation as soon as possible.

It gives me great pleasure to stand on behalf of New Zealand First to talk in the Committee of the whole House with regard to the Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill. We absolutely concur with what has been said by the Labour Party members with regard to this bill: it is well and truly overdue. It should have happened years ago and it is great to see that the Committee stage is finally taking place here today under—almost—urgency.

There will be a lot of people at home who will be sitting back watching this conversation take place. It will be giving them a great amount of pleasure, as it does me, particularly when I think about my own grandmother, who, sadly, has passed away. She relied heavily on those people—who were paid very poor wages—coming into her home to give her care and help. These workers give support and help to the most vulnerable people of our society—people who have worked hard their entire life and paid their taxes—who then see those workers unfairly treated and being paid very, very small amounts of money to do probably the most important work that anybody could do, which is to give care and support to those people who have created New Zealand the great country we live in.

The travel time and the costs incurred to get to clients when you are doing this sort of work are horrendous. In some of the larger electorates and provinces around the country the travel time can be hours. When you go to people’s homes and give support and help, you incur costs in terms of fuel and maintenance for your vehicle, and for this bill to address that issue is absolutely fundamental. But it is not just about recognising the cost involved in travelling that distance. It is also about recognising the time, and allowing the minimum wage as a bare minimum to be paid is, I think, a very good step in the right direction. But it is not good enough, fundamentally, going forward.

We would like to see some more work done in this area to make sure that the wages are fair and adequate. This is an area that is not being looked after as far as funding goes. We are talking about workers who are paid largely a very low wage. If you go to those retirement villages, to those homes, to those people who ask for and need this care, you will see that the questions and the concerns that are raised by not only the workers but also the people who are being looked after show that the pay is just substandard. We need to put a priority on looking after the workers who are in this sector. One of the lowest paid professions in New Zealand needs to be looked at as one of the most highly regarded positions that anybody could take on.

💬 Barbara Stewart: Treating the most vulnerable.

That is right. Treating the most vulnerable workers should be an absolute priority for this Government. We do have to say that this is a good bill. It does not go right to the end where we would like to see it, and more work will need to be done in alignment with the cross-party accord to see those wages raised considerably. But, certainly, being able to be remunerated for the time it takes to travel to a workplace is absolutely fundamental for this bill. We will certainly be supporting this bill through, and we look forward to seeing it come through by 1 March. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to take a call for the Green Party on the Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill in this part of the proceedings, the Committee of the whole House.

I would like to start my speech by acknowledging the genesis of this bill. The genesis of this bill really does rest with Jenny Goodman, the home-care worker and New Zealand Public Service Association Inc. (PSA) member who, with her union, lodged a claim with the Employment Relations Authority way back in August 2013. The union and Jenny were basically acting on some of the recommendations that were coming through from the Human Rights Commission report Caring Counts, put together by Dr Judy McGregor, who was one of the commissioners at the time. She actually went undercover as a home-care worker in order to have a look at how the aged-care sector worked and what the conditions were that the women—mostly women—in that industry faced, as well as, of course, the clients themselves.

What Dr McGregor recommended was a series of things but the first five were that the Government show leadership to deliver better services to older people, because we are not paying home support workers or even rest home workers as well as they should be paid. We have to acknowledge that they are underpaid and that is what the equal pay case is about, which is currently being negotiated. But when we do not pay them well enough, then essentially it is a disservice to the clients they look after. She also recommended that the woefully low wages be addressed and that as a minimum the Government-funded service provided in the aged-care sector, including home support, should actually reach some sort of parity with those who are employed directly by district health boards.

Dr McGregor also suggested that there be a consistent and fair travel policy covering actual time and costs, and this is what we are discussing today, but also that there be a commitment to qualifications for staff and that employers commit to this, and that there be voluntary safety standards including a home and community support sector standard, and that that become compulsory. This would set out minimum standards for care, which would protect older people as well as the workforce. This bill is actually the result of the Ministry of Health and the employers and the unions agreeing that they will address the issue, at least around travel time.

As a result of the agreement to withdraw legal proceedings and to forgo back-pay claims for the workers in the home support sector, there is also an agreement that the working group that was set up to address this issue carry on and look at the qualifications for home support workers, but also look at regularising their hours of work. Essentially, the home-care support sector is based on zero-hour contracts. That is exactly how it works, and it is a scourge for workers across the country, because, essentially, from week to week many workers cannot actually determine how much they will get paid or plan how they will spend that pay, as a result.

As a result of the negotiations, this was the deal—that qualifications would be discussed and there would be an attempt to regularise the workforce so that it could have secure hours in that area. It is a real tribute to the negotiating powers and goodwill, I would say, from Jenny Goodman and from all those members of the PSA who have ratified this, that workers are looking forward to the future, to a time where they can have regularised hours and a career path, with training, that would be offered to them and acknowledged within their pay scales.

The settlement is also constructed so that, although it is going to cost $38 million, I think, in order to bring the travel time into play so that all those workers in that sector do get paid the travel time—despite that—we need to make sure that the money that goes into the home support employers is actually passed on to the home support workers themselves. This is an undertaking that the employers themselves have signed up to, and they are the ones that are listed in the schedules to this legislation.

The legislation does also make mention of ACC home support workers who are working with ACC clients. That area needs to be addressed as well, because—and I have done it myself when I was a home-care worker with the Nurse Maude Association many years ago—if you are working as a home support worker, some of your clients are ACC clients but some are covered by the district health board, and you get different pay rates because there is no consistency across there. This needs to be addressed for ACC home support workers as well—that they get paid their travel time.

This is going to have a major effect on the industry itself, but I am really pleased to see that the employers have signed up to it. They recognise that in order to provide really good service to those clients in our community—most of whom are our most vulnerable, and the workers themselves have been vulnerable too—these issues of underpayment, of travel time not being paid, need to be addressed now.

In context, there is still a lot of work to be done in the whole sector. As we know, the aged-care sector is a female-dominated occupation, and as a consequence—and as Judy McGregor outlined—the wages have been incredibly low. The Kristine Bartlett case for rest home workers, from the E tū union, has also resulted in more negotiations with the sector and with the Crown about how to apply equal pay across this female-dominated workforce. That is something that we look forward to in the future.

It struck me as I was again reading the bill that the only comparison I can make is that it is similar to a Treaty settlement bill, in that there have been major negotiations with several parties, some of whom may or may not be accepting of the deal. But there has been a deal struck, and that deal, that negotiation, is now brought before Parliament to be enacted. So it is with pleasure that we will be supporting this bill, and we look forward to the day when pay equity comes before this House as well.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chairman. As I look across the Chamber I can see many of my colleagues who have had an association with the home and community sector in their previous lives, so what I am about to say will come as no surprise to them, I am sure.

This bill is really about equity on a whole lot of levels. It is about equity for pay, to recognise that home and community care is as important, if not more important, than many other roles out there. It is about equity for gender, because 91 percent of the people who perform the work in the community are women. It is about equity for training, and for the recognition of the training that many of these home-care workers undertake when they are undertaking some very advanced personal care. They may be involved in percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy feeding or they may even be involved in supporting medically fragile children, with skills and training that are second to none but are not recognised currently in their pay rate. It is also about the equity of recognition of the status of the care that is delivered in the community, that it can be as good as, if not better than, care that is provided in institutions. Let us face it, many of our older people really value the opportunities to stay well in their own homes and in the communities of their choice.

This bill we support wholeheartedly, because it recognises all of those inequities and it does go some way towards addressing them. This bill also recognises the work that has been done by unions, by the district health boards, by the Ministry of Health, and by those home-care service providers themselves to come to an arrangement that sees us going some way towards having fairer wages for workers in the support service.

If I can talk a little bit about what I understand of the background that has got us to this place: over the last several years we have engaged in a process of reassessing the levels of care that the recipients of this care require. As our health care dollar is stretched even further, assessments have been made that the amount of time to deliver specific pieces of care—whether that be around looking after someone’s home, preparing someone’s meal, doing personal care such as showering or helping people with their shopping, or around issues of social isolation—the time required to complete those functions has been diminished somewhat.

That is really around our ability to deliver more services for the time that that home-care worker has. As a consequence of that, that home-care worker may be delivering services to more people in the course of their 8 or 9-hour day—or however many hours they may work across the day—than they would have done in the past. What this has required is more travel, because, as a consequence of having more clients to work for in your normal hours of work, the amount of travel you are doing has increased. So it is right that we should recognise that travel between our clients is actually part of our work. We should get paid for that, and this bill addresses that.

It does not address, necessarily, the issue of what we should be paying. Given the sensitive nature of the care that is delivered, in my view we should be paying these very caring people a lot more than we are. Part 1, clause 4, really relates to that settlement, that agreement that was made by those four parties. Also, Part 2, clause 10, speaks to a very important principle that has been used in this bill, which is that no home-care service employee be financially disadvantaged. That has underpinned much of the discussion and debate—that they should not be financially disadvantaged—which has led us to the point where we are now in a position to pay for travel between clients. With reference to Part 2, clause 6, this bill will also extinguish some of the current claims that home-care service employees may have. That will settle that.

Part 3, clause 28, also looks at amending the Minimum Wage Act to provide an exemption to the requirement to pay wages at the minimum rate. Also, just on that note, Part 3 looks at amending three Acts, including the Minimum Wage Act, which will then require home-care services to pay for travel at no less than the minimum wage. Clause 29 contains the amendments to the Employment Relations Act. Because that travel time will now actually be counted as employment time, it will have significance to employment agreements. Also, it relates only to workers who attract a wage—it does not apply to salaried staff. Also, clause 30 contains the amendment to the Holidays Act, which, of course, has reference to the fact that the travel time is now included as work time. So it has a reference to the Holidays Act.

You cannot look at the work of a home-care support worker in isolation, just around the funding stream that may come from the Ministry of Health or the district health boards. One thing that the Health Committee did manage to get included in this legislation is the work that is conducted for the Accident Compensation Corporation. Because many of the workers will be working across a range of clients who will have their care managed by district health boards, the Ministry of Health, or the Accident Compensation Corporation, to leave ACC out of this legislation would have been unfair. It would have meant that you would have two strata of payments, which is not right and is not appropriate.

I just want to finish by commending the bill, and commending all of those home-care workers who have spent so many hours really fighting for this to come to the House and to actually be enacted. I pay homage to them for the work that they do. Many of us know—we have older parents who are well cared for in their homes. Without that, they would have to be in institutions, and we know the value of having our loved ones in their own residences in the community. It has far better outcomes for them, their well-being, and their quality of life, and it certainly has far better impacts for us on our health spend. So, in conclusion, I support this bill and I commend it to the Committee.

I am pleased to take a call on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill. I understand from listening to previous members this afternoon that this bill has arisen from there having been an unfair disadvantage financially impacting on the home and community workers and that this has been going on over a very, very long period of time. I also want to add, as previous speakers have said, that I am actually quite pleased that multiple areas such as the Ministry of Health, the district health boards, the unions, and the employers have all agreed that this issue is not something that they wish to see continue for longer.

Adding to what the previous members have said, I also want to say that this has been an appalling position for workers to be put in—to not be recognised for their travel in between their clients’ homes. In today’s world it is absolutely appalling to know that that was occurring. I also want to add to what the member Poto Williams said, which is that when we are going into our communities and into the homes of our loved ones, often it is to take care of our elderly people.

In my previous career I had quite a few clients who found the situation they were in quite frustrating, and for them it was all about the love of the job that they were going to, between each client’s house, and it was the long-term commitment they made to these clients to ensure that they could still see them and could provide personal services such as showering and making sure that these clients were actually looked after.

So I am rather pleased that this bill, and the way that it is going through, is addressing that problem, but I am also concerned to hear that it does not address the underpayment or the undervaluing of this sector itself. Coming from a previous career where we were a female-dominated workforce, we often struggled to actually get recognised and be able to feel quite proud and to ask for a higher wage, as females in the workforce. So I am rather heartened to hear previous members discussing this as an area that they are going to be watching quite closely. To ensure that there are the qualifications needed to deliver the level of care and knowledge to our at-home clients is actually quite crucial.

I want to mention a saying that we have in the hairdressing industry, which is that if you pay a person peanuts, then you are going to get monkeys. I am rather happy to say that the people in this sector particularly are in no way at all monkeys. They are very proud people, they are very hard-working people, and I think it is fantastic that this bill is actually addressing their ability to be paid while going to and from a client’s house. So New Zealand First supports this bill. Thank you.

Preamble agreed to.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 agreed to.

Part 3 agreed to.

Schedule 1AA agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.