“We also know that 91 per cent of early childhood educators are women,and don’t believe that it’s a coincidence that the workers in this industry have been underpaid and undervalued for too long,” Aly said in a statement toThe Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age.
During parliamentary question time on Tuesday,Aly said:“For too long,these important issues around the early childhood sector and women’s economic empowerment and the connection between the two have been undervalued and underappreciated.”
Aged Care Minister Anika Wells also acknowledged on Tuesday that care workers were undervalued in Australia as the government started reforming the troubled aged care sector. “Until they feel that value we will not get enough people in the sector,” she said.
Briggs said Goodstart had negotiated an enterprise agreement that put its educators’ wages on par with preschool teachers,but the organisation’s influence was limited by only occupying 9 per cent of the national market.
She said there was no direct link between government subsidies and award rates in childcare,and there needed to be a regulatory mechanism to link increased public funding to the sector to higher wages so providers passed that funding onto staff.
“I don’t blame any women leaving to seek higher wages,” Briggs said,adding early educators were rapidly going to the state school system. “There’s a clear drain that’s been going on there for years. With the other early learning educators,if they’re left behind in terms of the marketplace,then why would you stay?”
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A report by Deakin University professor Andrew Scott,convenor of the Australia Institute’s Nordic Policy Centre,said the most urgent problem facing the early education sector was workers’ pay.
Scott recommended Australia follow Sweden in providing salary boosts to early educators with higher qualifications.
“It’s a short-term immediate impetus to retain more high-quality educators in early learning,which will stabilise the current workforce crisis,and it will help ensure that the supply will be there ... to meet the demand being boosted from the new investments from Commonwealth and state government,” he said.
The federal government haspromised to spend $5.4 billion overhauling early childhood education,by lifting subsidies for lower-income families and having the Productivity Commission review the sector with a view to creating a universal fee subsidy of 90 per cent.
Scott said greater access to childcare without additional support for staff would leave the sector vulnerable.
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Thousands of early educators,who are paid as little as $24 an hour,are planning anationwide strike next month to heap pressure on the government to act. Briggs described the decision to strike as “really big deal” as staff were highly dedicated to their profession.
Briggs urged the government to move rapidly on a plan to stop the childcare sector from haemorrhaging jobs,adding it wasn’t as bad as aged care,but themove by state governments to expand access to younger children meant “we’re going to get there in a hurry.”
“Just don’t leave it to the system falls over,” she warned.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news,views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weeklyInside Politics newsletter here.