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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
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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

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