Early childhood educators have won an historic pay increase of up to $10,000 per year.
Local childcare centres have celebrated the 15 percent pay rise, which will be installed over two years.
GoodStart Mount Nasura Centre Director Sharee Dunnet said she and her staff were happy with the pay increase and that it was “a giant first step” and a “win for those of us in the sector that have been on this fight for a very long time”.
The prime minister’s announcement last week addressed a sector-wide workforce crisis in early education, where staff shortages and burnout have led to 60 per cent of educators saying they want to leave within three years.
The Examiner met with staff at GoodStart when the PM stopped by in late June.
Reeann Andrews had been working at the centre for eight years and said she’d seen qualified educators leave the sector “in droves” during that time.
“We’re just not getting paid enough,” she said. “The workload is too high, the amount of paperwork we have to do is insane, and we’re still not recognised for the valuable work we do. People still consider us to be glorified babysitters.
“A 25 percent pay rise would be a good start to fixing a lot of the problems”.
Reeann was due to go on maternity leave this month, and Sharee said she’d struggle to replace her in the midst of the nation-wide staffing crisis.
“It’s horrible, but what it’ll mean is that we’ll have to reduce our numbers of children,” she said.
“For every one educator who leaves the industry, it affects 15 children.”
We asked Sharee whether 15 percent would be enough to stop qualified educators from walking away from the industry.
“We are happy with the offer of 10 percent this year and 5 percent next year, along with our standard award increases each July,” she said.
“We also have a number of wage cases that we are still fighting, so we think we are still looking at 25 percent by the time we win all of them.
“Will it keep educators? It’s a great start. Unfortunately, educators are burnt out and feeling undervalued.
“That recognition is part of the next steps and I know this government has more initiatives it would like to bring to our sector.”
The government-funded wage increase does come with a large caveat – for staff to receive the wage boost, childcare centres must agree to cap fee increases to parents at 4.4 per cent.
The government said it wants to make sure workers can be fairly paid without the costs being passed on to families.
Some local childcare centre staff we spoke to were unsure about whether that commitment would hurt them in the long run, with centres potentially needing to cut costs instead.
