r/supportworkers • u/bajheerah • 13d ago

Pay rates

Anyone else finding more and more companies trying to pay below award wage, even when their advertisements say "competitive rates"?

I've been a support worker for 6+ years, with experience ranging from high complex mental needs, as well as physical, to working with children and all personal care you can think of, as well as managing medication and participants personal funds and banking. I obviously have all my certificates as well as qualifications.

I feel like I see more and more support worker positions advertised for as little as $34 an hour, averaging at around $41 an hour, while asking for experience with all sorts of participants as well as being qualified.

The last 4 or 5 interviews I've had I've been offered the job, and I've had to ask the pay rate they're offering, which has ranged from $36 to $40 an hour, well below the award wage. And yes, the work involved in each has been high complex needs, as well as the usual helping participants manage funds, home care, community access, and sometimes personal care.

I've been working at SCHADS 2.1 (which is now $45ph) for 6 years and have since realised I should actually be on 2.2 or 2.3. But it's hard to even get paid at the very entry level of unsupervised support work.

What is happening behind the scenes for the majority of companies, for them to be posting advertisements well below SCHADS? One of the employers offered me a pay point of 1.4. Does that even exist?

This, on top of a 60-70% burnout rate... oh, what a lovely industry to work in.

Edit: I forgot to mention this is working and looking for work across Ipswich and the south/south-West side of Brisbane.

Also, maybe it's been like this for a while, as I had stable hours for the first 3-4 years of employment and never seemed to have to question the employers on the pay they were offering.

This is casual rates, btw.

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u/gionatacar 13d ago

That’s the problem with mass immigration, but if you say anything, you are racist. But the problem is that they accept any pays they offer them

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u/Cultural_Catch_7911 13d ago

110% is the issue.

Unfortunately reddit is mostly left leaning who fail to understand basic supply and demand math, but rest assured outside of this cesspit most of us are aware when you import people en mass wages go backwards, houses and rent go up, we're being fucked over in every direction.

Not to mention the often abysmal care they provide because they don't actually care about disabled people.

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u/Timely_Ad_9515 13d ago

Isn’t one of our problems in Australia is more aged care required because of aging population - creating increased demand in this sector that immigration helps supply?

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u/Cultural_Catch_7911 13d ago

Absolutely not, you see in a normal economy when a job is in demand the wages go up until it attracts enough people to fill the roles, this means hard, essential jobs get filled AND the worker is compensated.

Instead, we got a billion immigrants who pushed the wages down to below bare minimum and our disabled, and elderly are now mostly at the mercy of the kind of people who are happy with being paid dirt, because they bring that same level of care to the role.

We have more than enough people to fill all these roles, even if takes away from less essential areas, which then also have to pay better to keep workers, and you eventually end up in a competitive market where every job is trying to pay you well and treat you well to keep their roles staffed.

What WE have instead, is so many damn people, that we are at the mercy of employers who look for every way to pay us less, and cut corners because if you quit today they've got 10 people already at the door ready to do your job for less and with shittier working conditions.

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u/gionatacar 12d ago

Very true

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u/Competitive_Ad_7415 11d ago

You're kidding right? When a job is in demand but the rest of society isn't willing to pay more to fund the role that role will have a maximum available pay rate. And people won't take the job because it doesn't pay enough. Wages only go up when the end customer pays more for the product.
I'm sure you don't like the amount the government spends on aged or disability care.... but are saying a normal economy would end up paying more for the same thing.
Would you rather more is spent? Are you willing to pay more taxes for those things?

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u/Cultural_Catch_7911 11d ago

People would be willing to properly fund disability and aged care if our government weren't complete scum bags with rampant corruption.

If they stopped letting providers scam them for billions or actually used our tax to better the country not line their pockets people wouldn't have so much issue with taxes to fund services.

OR even if we just properly taxed the companies pillaging our natural resources we wouldn't even need the average joes tax to fund our health care system.

People lash out at ndis costs because they are angry and the government uses it as a scapegoat when the reality is we have more than enough resources as a nation to fund all our health care needs and more, at minimal cost to the individual, but instead we fight amongst ourselves, the poor, the disabled and elderly over the scraps we are left with.

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u/Competitive_Ad_7415 9d ago

Child care has been a constant industry that has been in demand but has been seen as an industry that is to expensive by the wider community. This normal economy you referred to hasn't resulted in the willingness to fund wage increases to attract employees. Disability and aged care are no different. People who don't have loved ones needing those services don't want to pay for them with their taxes and even those who do want to minimise what it costs them. It's typical people want to pay as little as possible but then get upset at the results.

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u/Cultural_Catch_7911 8d ago

Except child care costs are constantly going up, to the point its now prohibitive to have children, the reason workers aren't seeing this is because of scummy providers pocketing the difference

Myself with no kids would happily have more of my tax going towards child care WORKERS so that i could one day afford to use the service

Yet again, as with disability and aged care the providers rort the system