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Summer 2004

Workload Spiral still the big concern in Nursing Homes

The spiraling workload remains the big concern of most HACSU members working in nursing homes, with visits to aged care facilities confirming this.

All categories of workers, including cleaning, domestic, laundry, nursing, admin and maintenance are reporting steadily climbing workloads.

The pressure is causing many workers stress and often ill-health, with a large number of members indicating they are doing significant amounts of unpaid over-time.

HACSU State Secretary, Chris Brown, says workload is now clearly the number one issue in aged care, and has attributed the blame to funding shortages.

"There's no doubt that nursing homes are operating in a very tight funding environment.

The Federal Government has promised some additional funds to nursing homes but it won't
solve the problems."

"The question for members is what are we going to do about it?"

"At the moment, many members are working themselves into the ground. They are going flat chat for the whole time, cutting on scheduled breaks and doing overtime compromising family time."

"My view is that this is not the right thing to do."

"All you do is paper over the problem. As well, you are probably keeping someone out of a job that should be there."

"If you keep doing it long enough in all likelihood, your health will suffer."

"My advice to members working unpaid over time is do not do it. Do a good, solid day's work, and if things cannot be done, leave them undone. Make sure at the end of the day that there is some documentation there."

"Many members think if I don't do it, then someone else will have to, so I might as well do it. But then the next person is doing the same thing and it goes on and on."

"People don't think it matters if they take a stand as an individual. But it does."

If HACSU members take a stand on this, the pressure will build on employers.

"The pressure has to build up in the system, through pressure from employees, clients, employers and family to force the Federal Government to properly fund nursing homes."