Human Rights Commission welcomes Government’s home care workers announcement

An announcement that Government will commence negotiations for a sector-wide settlement over travel time for home care workers has been welcomed by the New Zealand Human Rights Commission.

“Thousands of home care workers across the country are not paid for the time they travel between the homes of the elderly people they care for. Home care workers who use their own vehicles to travel thousands of kilometres every year are hugely disadvantaged by this policy,” said Dr Jackie Blue, Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner.

“Reimbursing home care workers for their travel is the right and fair thing to do and was a key recommendation in the Human Rights Commission’s Caring Counts inquiry into the aged care workforce.”

Nearly 50,000 home care workers, most of them women, undertake indispensable but largely invisible employment: caring for our elders either in their homes, in residential aged care or in hospitals.

A home care worker who engaged in the Caring Count’s inquiry told the Commission: “Carers are completely undervalued. We do a job that no one sees. We are a vulnerable workforce looking after vulnerable people."

Website: http://www.hrc.co.nz/eeo/caring-counts-report-of-the-inquiry-into-the-aged-care-workforce/

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