'It's not babysitting': Early childhood educators set for bumper wage increase (2024)

Childcare providers have backed the federal government’s plan to increase wages for early childhood workers, as part of a $3.6 billion effort to bolster a female-dominated workforce plagued by staffing shortages.

The increase will be phased in over two years, starting with a 10 per cent rise from December this year, and then a further 5 per cent from December 2025.

The wage increase also applies to workers in outside school hours services, who care for school children of working parents in increasingly large numbers.

The pay bump is tied to a commitment from childcare centres to limit fee increases.

The government said that is to ensure workers can be fairly paid without the costs being passed on to families.

To be eligible to receive funding for the wage increase, centres won't be able to increase their fees by more than 4.4 per cent over the next year.

"Early educators shape lives and change lives. We can never thank them enough for what they do – but we can make sure they are properly valued and fairly paid," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

"The childcare debate is over. It's not babysitting. It's early education and it's critical to preparing children for school," Education Minister Jason Clare said.

"A pay rise for every early childhood educator is good for our workforce, good for families and good for our economy."

Sector facing a staffing crisis

Finer details on how the government will enforce the limit on fee increases are yet to be released, but in a sector so tight on workers ministers are betting operators who don't sign on will lose staff to those that have.

"Any centre that doesn’t sign on will lose their staff to centres around the corner that can pay their staff more," Mr Clare said.

"Through a legally enforceable agreement we’ll provide this money as a grant. And centres and providers will need to make sure they’ve got the necessary industrial instrument registered with the fair work commission to make all of that happen."

The early education workforce – made up of at least 95 per cent women – has been facing a staffing crisis, with workers routinely stretched to the limit and some centres having to close due to a lack of educators.

"This is a wonderful outcome for a highly feminised workforce that has for far too long been neglected and taken for granted," Early Childhood Education Minister Anne Aly said.

"Properly valuing the early childhood education and care workforce is crucial to attracting and retaining workers and vital to achieving the quality universal early learning sector Australian families deserve."

Last year the government spent about $5 billion increasing childcare subsidies for parents and it has now received the final report of an 18-month long Productivity Commission inquiry into universal childcare, which the government said would be released "in due course".

Historic Fair Work Commission talks

The pay rise was negotiated at the Fair Work Commission (FWC) in the first example of "pattern bargaining" where conditions can be negotiated by workers and business owners across an entire industry.

Previously industrial laws only allowed for individual enterprise bargaining.

The changes are designed to give workers at small businesses, who can lack the bargaining power of larger unionised workforces, more power at the negotiating table.

The government's legislative change was criticised by employers as a sign of the government's capture by union interests, the government dismissed such commentary as "breathless hysteria".

Childcare workers and operators sought to have the government join pay the talks due to its large role in funding the sector.

The pay increase was agreed as part of these Fair Work Commission negotiations but the government's efforts to impose a ceiling on childcare pay rises is separate to those talks.

'Monumental moment'

Australia's largest childcare provider, Goodstart Early Learning, which operates 660 centres across the country, said the pay rise would help fix the staffing crisis.

"Vacancies in early childhood have more than doubled in the last four years, and continue to rise even as vacancies in other sectors are falling. Every unfilled educator role means up to 15 other families struggling to find care to work," CEO Ros Baxter said.

The company pledged to work within the government's fee cap of 4.4 per cent.

The peak lobby groups for small and community childcare operators, the Community Child Care Association and Community Early Learning Australia, also welcomed the decision.

Lisa Bonser, an early childhood educator of 20 years based in New South Wales, hailed the pay rise as "history making".

"This is a monumental moment … this means I can stay in the job I love and I know that it is going to change a lot of lives, not just my own," Ms Bonser said.

"There are people I work with, and at other centres, that are just hanging on because they can't get a second job, or they want to have quality of life, and having this extra finance come in will be paramount for them."

The United Workers Union (UWU) said the move means educators would "be able to stay in the sector and in the jobs they love".

The UWU said it hoped the agreement would spread to all of the more than 200,000 workers, not just those involved in the FWC negotiations.

The Parenthood, which advocates on behalf of parents and families, said the pay rise was "decades in the making" and a victory for every early childhood educator, "past, present and aspiring".

"This is momentous for gender equity," executive director Georgie Dent said.

"It directly addresses the chronic undervaluing of a highly feminised workforce, but it's also going to bolster a critical enabler of women's workforce participation more generally."

Asked on ABC RN whether the coalition supported the move, its treasury spokesman Angus Taylor said the opposition would work its way through the detail.

"The principle of higher real wages for all Australians is one we will always support, but you can't achieve that if prices continue to go up at the rate they have been," he said.

Greens education spokeswoman Steph Hodgins-May criticised the government for not moving to immediately rollout universal childcare and said even a rise of 4.4 per cent would harm working families.

"4.4 per cent is now a guaranteed childcare fee hike in a cost-of-living crisis and that's higher than inflation," she said.

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