Union calls for up to 35% pay hike

Disability support worker Leanne Richards has a clear explanation for why her sector struggles to hold on to people. Plenty of new starters arrive with no experience, she says, stay a little while, then realise they could do about as well on a supermarket checkout "without the additional risk of getting beaten up every day".

Richards was speaking at a rally in Newcastle's Gregson Park on Tuesday timed to coincide with the Australian Services Union (ASU) lodging its detailed work value claim with the Fair Work Commission. The filing spells out the pay rises the union wants under the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services (SCHADS) Award.

The headline number is up to 35 per cent, for roughly 300,000 community and disability workers. The union calls it the sector's biggest wage claim in more than 14 years. For HR teams at charities, not-for-profits and NDIS providers, it serves to complicate an award overhaul they are still working through, and a funding picture that remains patchy.

A claim two years in the making

The case isn't a new one - the ASU first applied to vary the SCHADS Award in July 2024, but the commission stood over that part of the claim while it ran its broader review of gender-based undervaluation, according to the Full Bench's June 2026 decision. With that review finished, the union formally restarted its push on 10 June outside the commission's Melbourne office. This week's filing puts the specifics on the table.

ASU national secretary Emeline Gaske framed the June launch around a member survey. "We surveyed our members and what they told us was stark," she said at the time. "More than half say they cannot get ahead financially. One in three won't have enough to retire on."

This time the union is leaning hard on state governments. In NSW, it wants every party to commit before the state election to funding whatever the commission awards in state-funded services.

"This women-dominated workforce is picking up the pieces," ASU NSW and ACT secretary Angus McFarland said in Newcastle. "We turn to them in our hour of need, but their hourly base wage doesn't match the weight of the work."

The retention problem behind the number

For employers, the union's evidence on churn may matter more than the percentage. In June, Gaske said forty percent of community and disability workers planned to leave their role within a year, and that sector turnover was more than five times the national average. The NSW and ACT branch's survey puts the share looking to quit within a year at one in four.

The same union research found 29 per cent of community workers had borrowed from family or friends to cover basic living costs, and 13 per cent had skipped meals because they were short of money.

Employers' numbers tell a similar story. National Disability Services' 2025 Workforce Census put annual turnover at 26 per cent for casual staff and 16 per cent for permanent staff, while the share of permanent full-time roles fell from 30 per cent to 21 per cent. When the census came out, NDS chief executive Michael Perusco laid the blame on NDIS pricing. "The current pricing model undermines the sustainability of the workforce, limits providers' ability to meet NDIS objectives, and ultimately impacts the lives of Australians with disability," he said.

The shortages are showing up elsewhere too. Domestic Violence NSW figures, cited by the Herald, show the state's domestic violence workforce shrank by 12 per cent in a year while demand climbed.

Richards says the job itself has changed. "We're now seeing a different cohort of participants in the NDIA (National Disability Insurance Agency) that historically would have been in a more specialised support environment," she said. Every departure, she added, "causes disruption to a participant's schedule, to their life".

Read next: Burnout isn't a workforce crisis. It's a leadership one

Stacked on an award still being rebuilt

The claim has arrived while employers are mid-way through the biggest SCHADS shake-up in a decade. In April 2025 the commission found workers under five female-dominated awards had been undervalued because of gender. Its final SCHADS decision on 1 June 2026 replaces the award's four classification schedules with a single structure from 1 October 2027.

The principles behind that structure set a benchmark of $1314.30 a week for roles needing a Certificate III and $1579.30 for degree-qualified roles.

Home care disability workers were due an interim rise of 15 per cent for most classifications on 1 October this year. In September the commission pushed that back to 1 December, citing the lack of any Commonwealth funding commitment and the time NDIS providers needed to rework client arrangements.

Read next: Australia makes 15% childcare worker pay rise permanent with $3.6 billion extension

That funding commitment came on 13 October. The federal government pledged $630 million to help more than 128,000 organisations, funded under 92 programs, pass on the award increases to more than 460,000 health, disability and community services workers.

Health and Disability Minister Mark Butler pitched it as a workforce play. "This investment will not only help retain existing workers, it will make this sector a more attractive career path to build a stronger workforce for the future," he said.

What HR should be doing now

Work value cases move slowly, and nothing about this one guarantees 35 per cent. During the gender undervaluation review, employer groups including National Disability Services and Ageing Australia argued against settings that would bring "unjustified cost increases for employers which go beyond what is necessary", OnNotice reported. Expect a similar fight over this claim.

Community sector peak bodies are already worried about readiness. When the June award decision landed, NCOSS, which represents NSW community organisations, warned that the ASU's claim could bring further pay and classification changes that would present "greater challenges for organisational readiness". Law firm McCullough Robertson made a similar point in its analysis of that decision, noting that many employers will still face material labour-cost increases even before any work value outcome.

That still leaves plenty for people teams to get on with:

• Lock in the 1 December payroll change. Schedule E home care disability staff get a 15 per cent interim rise from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 December, with levels E.4.2 and E.5.2 rising 14.96 and 13.31 per cent under determination PR814259. Check who is actually classified under Schedule E, because the commission has flagged widespread misclassification across the award.
• Start mapping to the 2027 structure.  Employers should review classifications, payroll mapping and enterprise agreements now rather than in mid-2027.
• Read the funding fine print. Find out which of your contracts sit inside the 92 Commonwealth programs, which rely on state money, and which are NDIS-priced. Each will move on a different timeline.
• Model a work value scenario. Nobody knows the final figure, but boards will want to see what a partial win looks like on the wage bill before the commission rules.
• Treat retention as a pay and practice problem. Pay is only one lever. Supervision, safer rostering and support after difficult shifts cost less than replacing staff in a market this tight.

Read next: Childcare pay rise is settled, but payroll compliance risk isn't

For now, the ASU's case rests on the argument that the work has outgrown the pay. McFarland put it simply: "They need and deserve a pay rise so they can keep supporting their families and communities."