thedevelopmentofawageassessmenttoolforbusiness.docVIP

The Development of a Wage Assessment Tool for Business Services By the time this special issue of Access has circulated, the Department of Family and Community Services will most likely have contracted a consultancy to develop a wage assessment tool for Business Services. This is not a new policy objective. One of the recommendations of the 1985 “New Directions” Report of the Handicapped Programs Review (that resulted in the Disability Services Act 1986) was the establishment of a “productivity based minimum wage for people working in long term supported employment on a pro-rata basis keyed to prevailing able bodied rates for that industry”. It has been a long and circuitous route for this objective to re-surface as a possible reality. It’s re-appearance raises a number of interesting questions. Why now? What caused the big delay? What terms of reference have DFACS set? What are the major hurdles, the contentious issues, that have to be cleared or sorted before an acceptable wage assessment tool is rolled out and operational? The Background The 1985 recommendation about an all-inclusive wage assessment process was buried not to be resurrected until ten years later by the Baume Report. The influential 1990 Ronalds Report, though highlighting many shortcomings of traditional sheltered workshops, had focused on the development of a wage assessment process applicable to the mainstream labour market. Reasons as to why the focus narrowed down to open employment can be found in subsequent policy developments: it become apparent that the official 5 year transition period for sheltered workshops to meet the principles and objectives of the DSA would not be achieved by the majority of change-resistant services; and the Department in 1990 funded the National Technical Advisory Unit to assist them to reform their business and employment practices. By 1992 the Government, bowing to ACROD’s constant lobbying, had amended the legislation to extend this transition peri