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Winter 2004

Restructuring in the Aged Care Industry

The recent Federal budget has done nothing to ease the situation for aged care in Tasmania and as a result of this we will see continued restructures occurring.

What happens when the employer restructures is that the only savings to be made come from reduction of the hours of work or the number of employees employed.

The idea that employees can give the same level of care and assistance based on the above figures is not a reality. Therefore something has to give.

The majority of employees in the aged care industry are caring people by nature and therefore the idea that residents must do without is not one that is accepted by employees.

The concern that this raises is that employees will continue to provide the services at the same level as prior to any restructure, even if this means that they have to run themselves ragged to do the work.

Today, in most Tasmanian aged care facilities, there has been more than one restructure. In some aged care facilities the employer does not get out amongst the employees to see what happens, so they aren't in a position to know or judge just what they believe is the level of service provided.

HACSU believes this situation has lead to unsafe working environments, and is leading to increases in workers' compensation claims.

What can be done about this?

Firstly, workers need to stand together and resist any further increases in workload. Workers need to say "NO", for the sake of their health and the sake of their family life.

Workers need to publicly campaign out in their local communities about this issue.

As well, every time there is a restructure, there should also be an independent safety audit done by a qualified person to look at any safety issues that may arise from restructuring.

The person who is to carry out the safety audit should be someone that both the employer and employees agree upon, someone who does not have an existing financial relationship with the employer and who has a track record and expertise in this area.

Some of the issues that could arise are the number of staff to the number of residents, number of employees required to perform the task, the type of work to be performed, type of equipment to be used etc.

There is also a DUTY OF CARE on the employee to work safely, and in most cases the employee often overlooks this. The Workplace Health and Safety Act provides for this duty of care for both the employer and the employee.

If you, as an employee, start cutting corners, running, doing things without checking, and something goes wrong, you may find yourself in legal trouble.

You should be doing your work diligently and carefully, not running and cutting corners and hoping for the best.

You owe it to yourself, for your health and financial security, and you owe it to your residents for their health and security.

If there is work that is not performed during the shift and needs to be done, whether this is in a care plan or something that you can see needs to be done, and the shift is finished, the employee should advise their supervisor that they have not been able to complete all the tasks allocated.

It is then the supervisor's responsibility to make a decision about who will do the work.

Employees should not feel guilty about doing this.

By taking this action employees are actually helping themselves because each time HACSU industrial staff are asked about increasing staffing levels, the employers always argue what is wrong with the staffing levels because all the work is being done.

In recent times HACSU has even had an employer state that they could reduce hours because there was an employee off on long term workers' compensation and the employees work mates were still getting all the work done.

To get proper employee to resident ratios in the aged care industry to allow employees to provide the level of care that they believe the resident is entitled to is to make the employers aware that there is only so much that can be done by so few.

Aged care is our future and we need to start taking care of our future now.