Resolving Pay Equity for Care and Support workers is a Disability Rights issue

There will be those who read that headline and scratch their heads and wonder, what does resolving Pay Equity have to do with Disability Rights?

Some will say that Disability Rights is all about realising the Rights that are within the UN Convention, and that is correct.

But I want to speak about one of the most important rights Art 19, and how we realise that right in reality. This is what Art 19 says:

States Parties to this Convention recognize the equal right of all persons with disabilities to live in the community, with choices equal to others, and shall take effective and appropriate measures to facilitate full enjoyment by persons with disabilities of this right and their full inclusion and participation in the community, including by ensuring that

b. Persons with disabilities have access to a range of in-home, residential and other community support services, including personal assistance necessary to support living and inclusion in the community, and to prevent isolation or segregation from the community;

This is what draws the Disability community and the Union movement together. We as disabled people have a Convention right to:

“… access to a range of in-home, residential and other community support services, including personal assistance necessary to support living and inclusion in the community, and to prevent isolation or segregation from the community”

In reality, someone has to provide those support services. This is not a nice to have, these are essential, in some cases, for disabled people to live their lives.

And this is the crucial link, the point of solidarity between disabled people, care and support workers and the Union movement.

We are tied together by the service that care and support workers provide to disabled people, but that is not unpaid service, it has value!!

And now we get to the decision last year by this cruel government to stop the 33 Pay Equity claims.

This decision was the most venal decision by any government I can remember. Especially considering the services that these workers deliver, the Care and Support services to disabled people and to our parents and grandparents, are so necessary, and they were cut for what purpose? To plug a Budget hole!!

Resolving Pay Equity and paying these workers properly is a Disability Rights issue, but it’s also a moral issue.

By gutting Pay Equity, this government lost whatever was left of its social licence to govern.

My call to action to every community under attack, or about to be under attack, is to join together in solidarity, and fight the government on this issue, because they will be after you next.