By Kim Choe
Disability support workers have overwhelmingly rejected the Government's settlement offer for pay rates during sleepover shifts.
The fight to be paid the minimum wage for overnight shifts has turned into a long-running legal battle that looks set to go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Whenever disability support worker Lynley Howard is on the overnight shift, she gets paid a flat rate of $34.
Health Minister Tony Ryall says this is because most of the time she is not working.
But Ms Howard says a good night’s sleep is a rarity.
“If you've got someone who's been vomiting, then you sleep with one eye open and one foot on the floor. Same if someone's got a cold, they could choke. No one wants to wake up and have someone dead on their shift, that would just be a nightmare for any community support worker”.
She and more than 90 percent of her colleagues have rejected an offer from the Government that would phase in the minimum wage for sleepovers over four years and pay 25 percent of back pay for shifts stretching back six years.
Unions want full minimum wage payments to start in six months.
Service and Food Workers’ Union National Secretary John Ryall says the workers took the initial offer into consideration.
“They did take the offer seriously because they're very low paid, but they think that their value to the employer and their value to the Government is much more than is being offered”.
Both the Employment Court and the Court of Appeal agree, but the Government says neither it nor the service providers can afford the more than $700 million it will cost over the first three years.
Mr Ryall says it is almost certain the Health Ministry will now take its case to the Supreme Court.
Despite the low pay, Lynley Howard loves her job.
“There's some really, really good stuff like when they do something for themselves for the first time and their faces just light up, you know? And you just think ‘Yes, I helped them do that!’”
But she and her colleagues just want a fair deal.
3 News