Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-26T01:33:29.182Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Wage theft, underpayment and unpaid work in marketised social care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Fiona Macdonald ,
Eleanor Bentham  and
Jenny Malone
Fiona Macdonald*
Affiliation:
RMIT University, Australia
Eleanor Bentham
Affiliation:
RMIT University, Australia
Jenny Malone
Affiliation:
RMIT University, Australia
*
Fiona Macdonald, School of Management, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia. Email: fiona.macdonald@rmit.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Marketised models of social care provision in Australia are placing pressures on service providers and driving changes in work organisation and employer practices, with potential to degrade social care jobs. While international experience of marketised social care has demonstrated the vulnerability of social care workers to wage theft and other violations of employment laws, Australia’s relatively strong industrial relations safety net might be expected to be better able to protect these low-paid workers. Nevertheless, there is emerging evidence of negative impacts on the pay and entitlements of frontline workers in the expanding community support and homecare workforce. This study investigates the paid and unpaid work time of disability support workers under Australia’s new National Disability Insurance Scheme. The research takes a novel approach combining analysis of working day diaries and qualitative interviews with employees to expose how jobs are being fragmented and work is being organised into periods of paid and unpaid time, leaving employees paid below their minimum entitlement. The article highlights the role of social care policy along with inadequate employment regulation.

Keywords

J390J81J88Employment conditionsNDISsocial carewage theftworking time
Type
Symposium: Wage theft, labour standards, inequality - Part 1
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 29 , Issue 1: Symposium on inequality in honour of AB Atkinson , March 2018 , pp. 80 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atkinson, C, Crozier, S (2016) Fragmented time and domiciliary care quality: ‘no-one sets out to provide bad care but you’re dragged to it, dragged into the gutter’. In: CIPD applied research conference: The shifting landscape of work and working lives, University of Westminster, London, 19 December.Google Scholar
Baines, D, Cunningham, I, Shields, J (2017) Filling the gaps: unpaid (and precarious) work in the non-profit social services. Critical Social Policy 37(4): 625–645.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bessa, L, Forde, C, Moore, S, et al . (2013) National Minimum Wage: Impact on the Domiciliary Care Sector. London: Low Pay Commission.Google Scholar
Boivin, L (2016) ‘Just-in-time’ labour: the case of networks providing home support services in Quebec’. International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations 32(3): 301–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briar, C, Liddell, C, Tolich, M (2014) Still working for love? Recognising skills and responsibilities of home-based care workers. Quality in Ageing and Older Adults 15(3): 123–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briggs, C, Meagher, G, Healy, K (2007) Becoming an industry: the struggle of social and community workers for award coverage, 1976–2001. Journal of Industrial Relations 49(4): 497–521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buckmaster, L, Dunkley, A (2017) Fully funding the NDIS. National Disability Insurance Scheme Budget Review 2017–2018. Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia. Available at: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/BudgetReview201718/NDIS (accessed 15 October 2017).Google Scholar
Charlesworth, S (2012) Decent working conditions for care workers? The intersections of employment regulation, the funding market and gender norms. Australian Journal of Labour Law 25(2): 109–129.Google Scholar
Charlesworth, S, Heron, A (2012) New Australian working time minimum standards: reproducing the same old gendered architecture? Journal of Industrial Relations 54(2): 164–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cortis, N, Blaxland, M (2017) Workforce Issues in the NSW Community Services Sector. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC), UNSW.Google Scholar
Cortis, N, Macdonald, F, Davidson, B, et al . (2017) Reasonable, Necessary and Valued: Pricing Disability Services for Quality Support and Decent Jobs. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC), UNSW.Google Scholar
Cristiano, G, Fernández, J-L, Wittenberg, R (eds) (2016) Long-term Care Reforms in OECD Countries. Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Galvin, DJ (2016) Deterring wage theft: alt-Labor, state politics, and the policy determinants of minimum wage compliance. Perspectives on Politics 14(2): 324–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, LJB (2014) Homecare workers have the right to be paid National Minimum Wage. University of West England, Bristol. Available at www2.uwe.ac.uk/faculties/BBS/BUS/Research/CESR/Sept_2014_Hayes.pdf (accessed 2 October 2017).Google Scholar
Hayes, LJB (2017) Stories of Care: A Labour of Law. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
HM Revenue and Customs (2013) National minimum wage compliance in the social care sector. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-minimum-wage-compliance-in-the-social-care-sector (accessed 23 September 2017).Google Scholar
Johnstone, R, McCrystal, S, Nossar, I, et al . (2012) Beyond Employment: The Legal Regulation of Work Relationships. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Federation Press.Google Scholar
Johnstone, R, Nossar, I, Rawling, M (2015) Regulating supply chains to protect road transport workers: an early assessment of the road safety remuneration tribunal. Federal Law Review 43(3): 397–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koehler, I (2014) Key to Care: Report of the Burstow Commission on the Future of the Home Care Workforce. London: LGIU.Google Scholar
Low Pay Commission (2016) National minimum wage: low pay commission report spring 2016. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-minimum-wage-low-pay-commission-report-spring-2016 (accessed 18 September 2017).Google Scholar
McCann, D (2016) Travel time as working time: Tyco, the unitary model and the route to casualisation. Industrial Law Journal 45(2): 244–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, F, Charlesworth, S (2013) Equal pay under the Fair Work Act 2009: mainstreamed or marginalised? University of New South Wales Law Journal 36(2): 1–24.Google Scholar
Macdonald, F, Charlesworth, S (2016) Cash for care under the NDIS: shaping care workers’ working conditions? Journal of Industrial Relations 58(5): 627–646.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maconachie, G, Goodwin, M (2010) Employer evasion of workers’ entitlements 1986–1995: why, what and whose? Journal of Industrial Relations 52(4): 419–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, B, Healy, J (2010) Who Works in Community Services? A Profile of Australian Workforces in Child Protection, Juvenile Justice, Disability Services and General Community Services. Adelaide, SA, Australia: Flinders University.Google Scholar
Milkman, R, González, AL, Narro, V (2010) Wage Theft and Workplace Violations in Los Angeles: The Failure of Employment and Labor Law for Low-wage Workers. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.Google Scholar
Moore, S, Hayes, LJB (2017) Taking worker productivity to a new level? Electronic monitoring in homecare – the (re)production of unpaid labour. New Technology, Work and Employment 32(2): 101–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morse, JM (1995) The significance of saturation. Qualitative Health Research 5(2): 147–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Disability Services (NDS) (2016) State of the Disability Sector Report 2016. Deakin West, ACT, Australia: NDS. Available at: https://www.nds.org.au/images/news/sods2016/State_of_the_Disability_Sector_report_2016.pdf (accessed 12 August 2017).Google Scholar
National Disability Services (NDS) (2017) Australian Disability Workforce Report. Deakin West, ACT, Australia: NDS.Google Scholar
Nelms, L, Nicholson, P, Wheatley, T (2011) Employees earning below the federal minimum wage: review of data, characteristics and potential explanatory factors, Research Report 3/2011. Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Fair Work Australia.Google Scholar
New Zealand Parliament (2015) Home and community support (payment for travel between clients) settlement bill – first reading, 13 October. Available at: https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/ (accessed 8 September 2017).Google Scholar
Palmer, E, Eveline, J (2012) Sustaining low pay in aged care work. Gender, Work and Organisation 19(3): 254–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pocock, B, Buchanan, J, Campbell, I (2004) Securing Quality Employment: Policy Options for Casual and Part-time Workers. Kingston, ACT, Australia: Chifley Research Centre.Google Scholar
Quinlan, M, Sheldon, P (2011) The enforcement of minimum labour standards in an era of neo-liberal globalisation: an overview. Economic and Labour Relations Review 22(2): 5–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Razavi, S, Staab, S (2010) Underpaid and overworked: a cross-national perspective on care workers. International Labour Review 149(4): 407–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubery, J, Grimshaw, D, Hebson, G, et al . (2015) ‘It’s all about time’: time as contested terrain in the management and experience of domiciliary care work in England. Human Resource Management 54(4): 753–772.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simonazzi, A (2009) Care regimes and national employment models. Cambridge Journal of Economics 33(2): 211–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United Kingdom Government (2017) Minimum wage for different types of work. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/minimum-wage-different-types-work/overview (accessed 13 October 2017).Google Scholar
Vosko, LF, Grundy, J, Tucker, EM, et al . (2017) The compliance model of employment standards enforcement: an evidence-based assessment of its efficacy in instances of wage theft. Industrial Relations Journal 48(3): 256–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, N (2011) The Fair Work Ombudsman – Two Years Navigation and Land Within Sight? Perth, WA, Australia: Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association National Convention. Available at: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/ArticleDocuments/764/Fair-Work-Ombudsman-Australian-Labour-and-Employment-Relations-Association-speech.pdf.aspx?Embed=Y (accessed 25 September 2017).Google Scholar