I hope the employment relations authority whips Health NZ into shape and tells it to stop taking the mickey out of home care workers who are really struggling with the price of fuel at the moment. 

Unions representing in-home care workers are taking action against Health NZ, saying these 23,000 people are out of pocket because of rising fuel costs and are simply being exploited. 

Because not only do home care workers have to pay for insurance, registration and maintenance of their own vehicles to do their critical work, they’re also having to pay more to get around and do their work with no support.   

Generally, these people earn little more than the minimum wage. Which, as of tomorrow, will be $23.95 an hour for an adult. I say, “as of tomorrow”, because it’s increasing tomorrow to $23.95 - at the moment it’s $23.50. So it’s going up by 45 cents tomorrow. 

So these in-home care workers are earning somewhere around $24 an hour. Miriam Patterson is one of them - she’s a community care and support worker in Timaru. 

She sees up to 20 patients a day and drives about 900 kilometres each week. If you can she’s one of the lucky ones. It’s because she drives a hybrid vehicle. 

Nevertheless, her fuel bill has gone up since the war in Iran began. Which she has to pay herself on top of everything else she has to pay for with no compensation from Health NZ. Insurance, rego, maintenance. The lot. 

Quite rightly, the Government is being very careful not to do anything that will unnecessarily add to the inflation problem. 

That’s why we’re not seeing here what they’re doing in Australia - where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced yesterday that the fuel excise tax is being halved for three months. 

But I can’t see how compensating these care workers for their increased fuel bills would be inflationary. 

As the union representing them is saying, these are essential workers who are having to find money to pay for the cost of doing their jobs. 

Money, as they say, that is coming out of their food budgets.  

And, unlike other service providers, they can’t just increase their prices to cover those costs. So they’re at the mercy of Health NZ which, in my mind, is taking them for granted, ripping them off, and needs to brought into line. 

Because this isn’t just about the care workers. It’s also about the people they care for.  

And I think it’s shameful that these critical workers are being treated this way. 

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