As you may be aware, on Friday 18 July 2025, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) made directions and issued a statement on next steps in its gender-based undervaluation review of priority awards. This includes the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services (SCHCADS) Industry Award.
These directions follow the release of the FWC’s provisional decisions on the priority awards in April 2025. The provisional decision on the SCHCADS Award — which proposes to replace the Award’s classification structure with a new one, based on the Aged Care Award benchmark — was met with concern by a range of parties, including the Australian Services Union (ASU), the Councils of Social Service and various industry peaks.
Many submissions to the FWC in May/June 2025 on the provisional decision emphasised the need for more time and a collaborative process to settle a new SCHCADS Award classification structure, which would ensure that workers’ diverse skills are appropriately recognised and that no worker would go backwards in pay rates as a result of the review.
Having considered these arguments, the FWC has now directed that further submissions can be lodged by late August to early September 2025. On the SCHCADS Award specifically, the FWC has set a deadline of Saturday 6 September 2025 for further submissions, with additional hearings scheduled for 27-31 October 2025. This approach differs from the timeframes proposed by the ASU, which would have allowed an additional six month process for further submissions.
TasCOSS is working closely with the other Councils of Social Service and the ASU to understand the implications of the FWC’s timeframes, and will update TasCOSS Members on further developments. We encourage organisations to consider putting in a submission to tell the FWC how this decision will impact your organisation and your workforce.
A copy of the FWC’s Draft Determination released on Friday 25 July 2025 can be found here. Please don’t hesitate to contact Todd Sculthorpe, Policy & Reform Lead, via email if you have any questions around the update provided.