The Victorian Labor Government has proposed to develop a new Secure Work Pilot Scheme, providing up to five days of sick and carer’s pay at the national minimum wage for casual or ‘insecure workers’ in priority industries.

Once up and running, the two-year pilot will provide workers with sick pay when they’re unwell, and carer’s pay when they need to take time to look after a family member.

In a statement, the government said the pilot scheme will cover workers in select sectors with high rates of casualisation and could include cleaners, hospitality staff, security guards, supermarket workers and aged care staff.

The pilot will be rolled out in two phases over two years with the occupations eligible for each phase to be finalised after a consultation process that will include workers, industry and unions.

Casual workers in eligible sectors will be invited to pre-register for the scheme, providing their contact details and information about their employment so that applications can be fast-tracked if they need to apply for payments.  An education campaign will also be rolled out to ensure eligible workers are aware of the support available when they need sick or carer’s pay.

The Victorian Budget 2020/21 will provide $5 million for consultation on the design of the pilot scheme to work through issues including documentation required to support payment applications and protections for workers who apply to access the scheme.

The government said that while any future ongoing scheme would be subject to an industry levy, the pilot scheme will be fully funded by the Victorian Government at no cost to business.

Victorian proposal raises many issues: Porter

Federal Attorney General and Minister for Industrial Relations Christian Porter (pictured) said the Australian Government recognised the myriad challenges with our industrial relations system highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, however the Victorian Government’s announcement regarding sick leave entitlements for casuals and other workers raises a number of major issues.

“The central problem with the Victorian proposal is it seems to start with a small, government-funded pilot and intends to finish with what would be a massive tax on Victorian businesses who would be forced to pay for both a 25 per cent additional loading in wages to compensate for casuals not receiving sick leave and then having to pay for an industry levy to fund sick leave as well,” the Attorney-General said.

“After Victorian businesses have been through their hardest year in the last century, why on earth would you be starting a policy that promises to finish with another big tax on business at precisely the time they can least afford any more economic hits?”

“The fact is that the proportion of employees who are casual remained largely unchanged for almost 25 years leading into the COVID pandemic.

“In fact, it was during the Hawke and Keating Governments that casual employment rose from about 18 per cent of employees to 24.4 per cent where it remained broadly steady thereafter.

“The better policy approach is to strengthen the ability of workers to choose to move from casual to permanent full or part-time employment if that is what they want to do. This is what has been under discussion in the industrial relations working group process between government and employee and employer representatives over recent months.

“It must surely be a better approach to let people have greater choice between casual and permanent employment than forcing businesses to pay a tax so that someone can be both a casual employee and get more wages as compensation for not getting sick leave – but then also tax the business to pay for getting sick leave as well.

“That would be a business and employment-killing approach.”

The Attorney-General said the Victorian Premier and Victorian Minister for Industrial Relations used the lack of access to paid leave during the pandemic as a key driver for today’s announcement, despite their own provision of a $450 isolation payment for people waiting on COVID-19 test results and the Commonwealth’s $1500 payment for people who test positive for COVID-19 or are required to isolate and don’t have access to paid leave.