UNITED
POLICY
SUBMISSION
United Workers Union submission
commenting on the National Workforce
Plan
to the
The Joint Standing Committee on the
National Disability Insurance Scheme
August 2021
For further information please contact Melissa Coad at Melissa.Coad@unitedworkers.org.au
Authorised by:
Demi Pnevmatikos
Executive Director
2
About UWU
The United Workers Union (UWU) is a powerful new union with 150,000 workers across the
country from more than 45 industries and all walks of life, standing together to make a difference.
Our work reaches millions of people every single day of their lives – we feed you, educate you,
provide care for you, keep your communities safe and get you the goods you need. Without us,
everything stops. We are proud of the work we do – our paramedic members work around the
clock to save lives; our early childhood educator members are shaping the future of the nation one
child at a time; our supermarket logistics members are packing food for your local supermarket
and our farms members are putting food on Australian tables; our hospitality members are serving
you a drink on your night off; our disability members are providing quality support to people with
disability; our aged care members are providing quality care for our elderly and our cleaning and
security members are making the buildings you work, travel and educate yourself in safe and
clean.
Whilst coverage and titles may differ on a state and territory basis, nationally UWU has many
members who work in the disability sector. As the people working in the disability sector daily,
members appreciate the opportunity to have their opinions, concerns and experiences considered
in response to the NDIS Workforce Plan.
Introduction
Thank you for the opportunity to provide this submission in response to the Department of Social
Services, NDIS National Workforce Plan: 2021-2025.
It is the view of United Workers Union that this plan fundamentally fails to address the significant
NDIS workforce issues that impact the attraction and retention of workers, and the quality of
disability supports provided in the NDIS.
It was our experience that there was very little opportunity for consultation with the disability
workforce and unions in the development of this plan. In our view this input could have
significantly strengthened the plan. Disability Support workers doing this work every day are well
3
placed to identify current attraction and retention issues and solutions to improve workforce
conditions. It was a significant missed opportunity to not consult with workers and unions in the
development of this plan.
As we have described in our previous submission to the Joint Standing Committees Inquiry into
the NDIS Workforce the establishment of the NDIS, combined with the general increase in demand
for disability support services, continues to place substantial pressure on the workforce to meet
demand. The disability sector is characterised by attraction and retention issues; low pay;
insecure hours; high levels of casualisation; and limited career opportunities and in many ways the
NDIS has exacerbated these workforce issues.
Not only does the NDIS funding and pricing framework institutionalise low pay, but it also
entrenches Award conditions as the ceiling rather than the minimum, preventing any capacity for
providers to appropriately compensate and attract skilled and experienced workers.
All these factors hinder the sustainability of the workforce into the future and the creation of the
quality jobs that this important workforce deserves.
There are several points we wish to make about the context of the NDIS National Workforce Plan:
2021-2025 (the plan) and we will then address the priority actions.
Context
Attraction and retention of workers
The context rightly identifies that retention of the current workforce is critical. On top of the need
to recruit some 83,000 new workers by 2024 it cites that with the current churn rate some
213,000 workers will leave the sector by 2024. The plan relies on the priorities it sets out to reduce
this churn rate dramatically. United Workers Union does not believe this plan includes the
necessary mechanisms to improve job quality such that it would dramatically reduce current churn
rates.
4
Issues of significant importance to the current workforce such as job security, wages rates,
workloads, and safety to name a few are in no way addressed in this plan. The plan itself raises a
number of these issues but then fails to address them. Anecdotally United Workers Union is aware
of providers where poor workforce conditions result in turnover rates of up to 70% per annum.
These conditions will not be remedied by the priorities in the plan nor campaigns to attract
workers to the Disability sector.
Innovation
The Plan identifies “an opportunity for providers in the sector to adopt innovative service models
that support appropriately skilled workers to work more seamlessly across programs, with
potential to deliver services to multiple client types”.
In United Workers Unions experience innovation in service models often results in models that
may be more cost effective for providers and deliver some benefit to service users but almost
always result in a diminution of workforce conditions, including increased casualisation, increased
job fragmentation and a decrease in autonomy for workers.
For providers who deliver services across programs there may be merit in streamlining some
regulatory models, however this may not apply to the workforce. This approach presupposes that
workers want to work across disability and aged care for example. In our experience workers often
have a distinct preference for work on one area or another, this preference is supported by
specific skills and knowledge relating to either disability or aged care. The workforce is not
homogeneous and the difference in worker preference and skill should be maintained to provide
quality services.
Priority 1
Promote opportunities in the care and support sector
The Plan sets out a priority to “Promote opportunities in the care and support sector” based on the
assertion that “Disability Support work is perceived to have lower job prestige, pay and fewer
opportunities for career progression compared to other sectors”.
5
This is not a perception. It is the reality of Disability Support Work. Campaigns promoting working
in the disability sector and enhanced entry pathways to the sector may be initially successful in
attracting workers who will just as quickly leave when the reality of the work becomes apparent.
Without addressing underlying workforce conditions this will not change.
Online tool for job seekers
Any online tool that overly focusses on values and attributes for suitability to work in the disability
sector will in our view not be a successful measure to attract workers.
While these may be important so too are skills, this work requires significant skill, some that can
be learned on the job and some that can be learned through training. It seems to us that this is yet
another mechanism that may initially attract people based on their values but would result in
significant disconnect then the reality of the work was realised.
Leverage employment program
Mechanisms to ‘incentivise’ job service providers to push unemployed people to work in this
sector can be counterproductive and could result in job service providers pushing people into this
work regardless of whether people are interested in or have the capability to do this work. this
would be beneficial for neither NDIS participants or the job seeker. Again, this might bring people
into the sector due to pressures relating to their unemployment experience who would not
necessarily stay.
This does not mean to say people who are currently unemployed should not be offered
opportunities to access relevant training and employment in the sector, but it needs to be
voluntary.
Priority 2
United Workers Union members would support initiatives to provide quality training across the
disability sector. However, it must be the right training at the right time.
6
We have several concerns with the specific training approaches in priority two. Significantly, all
these proposals push the responsibility for training on to the worker.
The plan states that “workers are increasingly disinterested in traditional qualifications”. In our
view the reasons that workers may not take up formal qualifications are often not because they
are not interested but because they would have to pay for them themselves, undertake the
training in their own time and the attainment of qualifications delivers no commensurate
improvement to wage or career outcomes. Replacing one type of training with another that does
not change the disincentives to undertake training will not result in increased training take up.
Micro credentials and update nationally recognised training
The existing barriers faced by workers in accessing and undertaking training need to be addressed,
these are predominantly cost, time and that increased training is not linked to career
advancement and wages progression. Since the transition to the NDIS, research shows there has
been a reversal in already low levels of training occurring in the sector. 1 Merely introducing a
different type of training will not remedy this.
Micro credentials can be used beneficially as an adjunct to ongoing training, however United
Workers Union is concerned that introducing micro credentialling could exacerbate the lack of
recognition already existing for any additional training. Workers might be increasingly required to
undertake miro credentials with no capacity to turn these into a formal qualification should they
wish to do so and no requisite improvement in wages and careers progression. Such training then
becomes an imposition on an already stretched workforce rather than of benefit and a mechanism
to improve quality service delivery.
Care and Support Worker Professional Network
The plan considers that this initiative would address a “lack of peer connections and support”
among workers. It may well do so but the current lack of connectivity and feelings of isolation for
1 NILS . Evaluation of the NDIS: Final Report. National Institute of Labour Studies. 2018 Available at: https://www.dss.gov.au/disability-and-carers/programs-services/for-people-with-disability/national-disability insurance-scheme/ndis-evaluation-consolidated-report 7
workers are directly linked to the NDIS. Since the introduction of the NDIS staff meetings, training,
peer support, buddy shifts and other mechanisms for workers to meet, learn from each other and
provide support have all but disappeared. In large part this is due to the NDIS pricing structure
that provides limited funding for non client facing worker time.
In United Workers Union view that capacity for workers to come together in paid time to learn
and access peer support are critical elements of work that are currently absent in the disability
sector. This absence diminishes worker satisfaction contributing to turnover and diminishes
quality service provision.
Skills passport
The basis of this priority stated in the plan is that “workers have increasingly turned to more
relevant training developed by providers to upskill, but this training has limited recognition across
the broader sector”.
In the first instance United Workers Union disputes that significant numbers of providers are
providing their workers with relevant training (other than mandated training).
A skills passport itself does not address access to training nor the quality of training. It places the
obligation to find and undertake training on the workers to add to their passport, potentially in
their own time and at their own expense. The mechanism of an “industry led group” to identify
which training would be included in the passport does not address how to get agreement across
the sector from providers to recognise that training.
Traineeships and student placements
Quality traineeships and student placements that benefit the trainee or student can only be
provided where organisations are adequately resourced to provide appropriate supervision and on
the job training. This is not the case in the disability sector currently.
8
United Workers Union has encountered examples of trainees being rostered on to shifts, this
should not happen, trainees should not be filling rosters but should be supernumerary to be able
to observe and learn hands on skills under supervision.
Priority 3
Alignment of provider regulation and worker screening across the care and support sector
Any alignment of regulation and screening needs to recognise the differences across sectors.
Disability and aged care for example while there may be some similarities are not the same.
Any worker screening or other worker regulation such as Codes of Conduct are not in and of
themselves indicators of quality service delivery, they are the bare minimum. They must also be
accompanied by training and information for workers to understand their responsibilities.
Continue to improve NDIS pricing approaches
This would be a laudable outcome. Current NDIS pricing inhibits quality service delivery in several
ways. It limits non client facing time which has had the effect of almost entirely removing paid
staff meetings, paid training opportunities and other paid per support opportunities for workers. It
sets a price for wages at the Award floor, inhibiting the capacity of employers to increase wages.
Until NDIS pricing can reflect the true cost of quality jobs and quality distality support it will
continue to inhibit both workforce and the delivery of quality disability support.
Conclusion
United Workers Union believes this plan is significantly lacking in any serious attempt to address
the existing workforce problems in the disability sector.
It does nothing to address the concerns of workers about job security, wages, safety, workloads,
lack of training and supervision, lack of career opportunities. It does nothing to equip workers with
skills, knowledge and the quality workforce conditions required to deliver quality disability
9
support. It is a missed opportunity to reform working conditions in the sector, that would attract
and retain workers and ensure a high quality safe NDIS for all participants.
This is not good enough. Disability workers and the people with disability they support deserve to
be valued.
10