Coalition supports union call for pay rise for childcare workers

Early childhood educators with a Certificate III are paid $19.07 while workers with similar qualifications in other areas of work are paid almost $30 per hour. Photograph: Photofusion Picture Library/Al/Alamy

A bid by the United Voice union to increase early childcare workers' pay by about a third has won support from the Coalition, while the Labor party is still considering it.

United Voice lodged a complaint with Fair Work Australia on Monday for the average childcare worker's wage to be increased by $10 per hour from $19.07, arguing workers are being underpaid because it is an area traditionally seen as "women's work".

Early childhood educators with a Certificate III are paid $19.07 while workers with similar qualifications in other areas of work are paid almost $30 per hour.

United Voice has applied for an Equal Remuneration Order with FWA which would cover about 68,000 childcare employees.

National president of United Voice, Michael Crosby, said the rate of pay being applied for took into account educational levels and professional skills and was about closing the gender pay gap.

"Educators' work has historically been underpaid because it has been viewed as 'women's work', drawing on skills that were traditionally unpaid as they were performed in the home.

"Today, childcare is professionalised and its quality is assessed in accordance with high standards," he said.

"Educators deserve a professional wage for the professional work they do.

"It is not in children's interests for this gross underpayment of educators to continue."

The Coalition's spokesperson for childcare and early childhood learning, Sussan Ley, said Labor's changes to childcare policy ? including a pay rise for some workers and requirement of certain skills ? meant the workers deserved to be paid more.

"The Coalition has said from day one, the pay issue for childcare workers should be put to the Fair Work Commission," she said.

"When you ask carers and early learning educators to take on extra responsibility, quality and skills improvement which Labor has done, it's not unreasonable the industry might then ask to be paid appropriately in recognition."

The union said the $300m Early Years Quality Fund was a step in the right direction and called for bipartisan support on it but Ley said it had divided the workforce.

"Now that United Voice has finally decided to approach this issue through the front door and not by some dodgy backdoor deal, we'll watch the outcome with great interest," she said.

A spokeswoman for the education minister, Bill Shorten, said the government would consider the FWA application.

"Labor is committed to closing the gender pay gap and improving the economic security of Australian women," she said.

"That is why this Labor government removed barriers to equal pay claims under federal workplace relations law, which made possible the first ever successful equal pay claim in the federal workplace relations system."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/15/coalition-union-childcare-workers-pay

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