Care workers the invisible modern slaves of the state
By Jane Carrigan
NewsHub: 18 April 2024
They don’t fit the profile of exploited cult workers, immigrants or refugees but caregivers are underpaid or not paid at all by a system that saves the state well over $200,000 a year for every person they care for.
Opinion: A family caregiver recently went to court to get justice at the Employment Court three years ago, but the Government fought back and took her to the Court of Appeal, which has just ruled she is not a “homeworker”.
Public servants have paid their lawyers over $1.5 million to fight her claim for a fair wage. So after five years of fighting the system, she now must either accept nothing or fight on and try to find justice in the Supreme Court.
Her case is about the thousands of people who are in a lifetime of servitude in their own home. These are people who have no choices. Their work is exploited by the state. They are either not paid at all, or are paid peanuts. These women and men look after disabled adults full time 24/7 and because of their work the Government saves millions each year in respite and residential facilities for disabled people.
If this class of our finest citizens are not “homeworkers” – then who is? This is the life of women and men who are cynically exploited and abused every single day by highly paid bureaucrats in Wellington. These caregivers work over 100 hours a week. Bureaucrats offer to pay them a fraction of that, if anything. In the case just heard the caregiver was offered pay for only 22 hours. She rejected that and stood up for her dignity and went to court to get just and fair recognition for her work. She won before the chief justice in the Employment Court but just lost in the Court of Appeal and is back at square one.
These caregivers are modern-day slaves, bound in every community, they are underpaid or unpaid by a system that wins from their work but won’t recognise them as “homeworkers”. For every person they care for, the public servants save the state well over $200,000 a year. They don’t fit the profile of exploited cult workers, immigrants or refugees, they are not involved in sex trafficking. They are invisible modern slaves of the state, non-newsworthy in today’s online frenzy.
The Court of Appeal has just decided that this care worker, who cares for her adult disabled son 24/7, is not a “homeworker”. Well they are right in one sense – she is not just a homeworker, she is so much more. She is an accommodation provider, a caregiver, a breadwinner, a shopper, a cook, a cleaner, a psychologist, a mentor, a nurse, a teacher, an entertainer, and an on call trouble shooter at all times of day and night. The Court of Appeal also said because she gets to sleep in her home she isn’t really a worker, she isn’t really working when she … works nights.
This is the life of thousands of people in New Zealand who are doing their work not out of choice but because state-funded community respite and residential services have been starved of funding, closed down, mothballed, emptied, and lost. Day programmes which also provided respite have long been abandoned. The truth is that over the last 20 years those disability services have had all the funding sucked out of them by officials in Wellington. They have spent millions on reviews and reviews of reviews. Their continual “transformation”, “policy”, “settings” and “consultations” delivered nothing.
The bureaucrats have wasted years with their meaningless processes supposedly transforming disability since 2012 – yes they have officially described their reviews and meetings and broken promises as “transformation” for 12 years. Their transformation has so far brought us a brand new Ministry of Disabled People costing tens of millions and brimming with lots of new public servants paid over $100,000 a year. Unlike the other bloated agencies currently under the spotlight, they are still hiring. That’s not transformation, it is misappropriation.
The public service has wasted 20 years with no new services for the people they serve. Instead family caregivers have been “leveraged” (“assessed”) and “settings” are “reset” regularly (“defunding”). They get no respite – literally. Community respite services have been defunded and made extinct.
When will we see real funding return to the coalface where the people are? When will these people and those in the community get real pay and support for their work? When will public servants be accountable for wasting money on themselves and the processes that just perpetuate their waste?
It’s time we owned this – as a society some of our hardest and most diligent workers are being exploited – by us – through our well-paid public servants.
JANE CARRIGAN
Independent disability advocate Jane Carrigan has repeatedly gone to court to fight for the rights of disabled people and their carers.
Last Updated 18/04/2024
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