Australia’s hard-working pharmacists push for higher pay

Professional Pharmacists Australia (PPA) members have delivered their submission to the Fair Work Commission (FWC), calling for a significant pay rise for pharmacists. The submission to the Gender Undervaluation – Priority Awards Review is the culmination of many years of hard work to convince the Fair Work Commission and The Pharmacy Guild that the minimum pay of pharmacists needs to increase. ?

Disappointingly, the Australian Private Hospitals Industrial Association is also participating in the case and is arguing against any pay increase for pharmacists, as many private hospital pharmacy departments use community pharmacy pay rates in hospital settings through tricky licensing arrangements to shortchange pharmacists through lower pay rates.

“Australia’s hard-working pharmacists are undervalued, overworked and underpaid. Their workplaces are characterised by high stress, understaffing and unsustainable workloads and with an expanded scope of practice on the horizon, these problems are only set to worsen.

“Australia’s pharmacists urgently need and deserve a pay rise.”

Mr Yap said Professional Pharmacists Australia had extensively advocated this issue and prepared a comprehensive case for a pay rise.

“It's taken hundreds of pages of evidence, witness submissions from members and campaigning to raise the profile of low pharmacy pay to reach this point. The system is broken if it takes this long to fix pay for highly skilled professionals.

“After much negotiation, The Guild has now finally agreed with PPA that award pay should rise, but unfortunately, the Australian Private Hospitals Industrial Association have opposed the proposed pay increase and are fighting for no pay increases to be applied to pharmacists at all.

“We are calling on all pharmacists to sign our petition to demand the Australian Private Hospitals Industrial Association support a pay increase for pharmacists.

“Even if we are successful in achieving this win, the largest increase to pharmacists' pay rates ever achieved, we can’t stop there.

“With a full, expanded scope of practice for pharmacists just around the corner, we may see the performance of these services become yet “another” expectation for no extra remuneration.

“With the Pharmacy Guild arguing in their submission that the evolving scope-of-practice does not and will not, on an overall basis, change the work value of a community pharmacist, we know we are going to be in for a long hard fight.”?

“We call on the Australian Private Hospitals Industrial Association to abandon its disgraceful opposition to a pay increase for Australia’s hard-working pharmacists.”

Professional Pharmacists Australia Submission to the Fair Work Commission

PPA’s submission outlined our arguments to: ?

1. Increase the minimum weekly rate for a four-year degree-qualified pharmacist to $1525.90 from $1337.60 as established for teachers, registered nurses and engineers. An increase of $188.30 per week.
2. The current relativities between classification levels in the Award to be maintained, which means a 14% increase to the pay rate for all the other pharmacist classifications (Intern, Pharmacist In Charge and Pharmacy Manager) ?
3. Scope of practice changes, which are underway to varying extents, are to be excluded from work value considerations at this time to ensure that pharmacists are not duped out of appropriate pay increases as the scope of their work expands and changes
4. That these pay increases be phased in over a 12–18-month period of implementation. The Guild is arguing for a?3-year implementation period.

Background information on the history of the Pharmacists Award

PPA previously ran a long and expensive case at the FWC in 2018-19 to have Pharmacists award wages increased on work value grounds. We argued that as one of the nation’s lowest-paid health professions, the work of pharmacists had significantly increased in scope and value since it was last evaluated. The Pharmacy Guild strongly opposed our case and argued that, if anything, the work of a pharmacist had become easier.

At the same time, the Guild also pushed for and successfully cut Sunday penalty rates for pharmacies, further dragging down pay rates. Ultimately, the FWC agreed that the work of pharmacists had increased in value but only delivered a modest rise in the award rates.

PPA members were not satisfied with this outcome and have continued the fight to increase pharmacists’ pay rates?at the FWC. This included our attempt to raise the pay rates for pharmacist interns in 2022 and our submission to the FWC’s gender undervaluation case, which is currently underway.?

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Sign our petition to demand that?the Australian Private Hospitals Industrial Association support a pay increase for pharmacists in the?Pharmacy Industry Award case.