Bridging Austria’s Elder Care Gap
Like many nations in the European Union, Austria is going through a major demographic shift when it comes to their population of elderly citizens. Within the next 15 years, a quarter of the nation’s populace will be over the age of 65. Some contributing factors to this rise include the overall improvement in life expectancy for EU citizens. Particularly of importance to the topic of care, more members of this demographic often have less children, thus, care cannot be shouldered through familial ties, presenting the need to rely on the social safety net.
Therefore, Austria has been an attractive destination for mostly female workers from outside the country, specifically EU member states in Eastern Europe. The largest contributing nation to this group is Romania, with Georgia, Moldova and Serbia trailing behind. The EU’s free movement principles that have been enshrined within both the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights allow EU citizens to reside in another EU nation for up to three months without a source of employment as “mobile workers”. Thus, it is very easy for aspiring care workers to set themselves up in Austria and obtain employment in long-term care.
One area of long-term care that attracts many migrant care workers is the live-in care model. Live-in care is often arranged for senior citizens in Austria to avoid the appearance of placing a patient “away” in a long-term care facility, allowing them to continue to reside in their own home while receiving care. Though the intentions are in a benevolent place towards the patient, the caregivers can often end up living in a grey area when it comes to established worker’s protections and wage regulations.
Case in point, it is very common that workers in the live-in care setting are often on-call, with no regard for breaks or a social life. These workers can also be subject to performing non-healthcare related tasks, such as running errands for the person that they are caring for or performing domestic chores. Additionally, due to the informal nature of their employment, they are often not fully exposed to or have access to key employment protections like trade unions or a formal complaints network.
Many of the long-term care workers are often migrating from nations that do not have robust employment opportunities, or existing opportunities in their homeland do not pay a living wage. This desperation can cause migrant long-term care workers to place themselves in situations where being gainfully employed, by any means, is more important than being gainfully employed with protections. This can have the effect of making an employee feel beholden to an opportunity, resulting in poor pay and exploitation.
The live-in care worker model also faced a particular challenge during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when cross-border travel was severely restricted, especially within the EU. Workers waiting for their relief to arrive after their prescribed rotations within Austria (usually 2-4 weeks) had to deal with their relief not being able to show or outright refusing to make the trip considering the travel restrictions.
Aside from creating a two-tiered economy within the long-term care system, this model that has been tacitly accepted by Austria has created what has come to be known as a “care gap”. This gap is unfortunately prevalent throughout most of the EU, and the same issues seen in Austria have manifested themselves elsewhere.
The in-home care scheme that is popular in Austria has also been seen in other EU states. One of the most detrimental side effects of the in-home care model is seen in the nations that are left behind by most of these workers. When workers migrate from EU member states in Eastern Europe in particular, this phenomenon creates a void in the nations left behind. Of note, with the motivation to migrate somewhere like Austria, the nations that are left behind often develop a “care drain”, and elder care in those countries tends to lag even further behind that of other EU member states.
Alleviating the issues brought about with concerns for migrant long-term care workers, the care drain and the welfare of the elderly has been a topic of high importance in Austria and throughout the EU. One major factor that could improve the foundation of the long-term care workforce is a commitment to establishing uniform training guidelines along with a concerted effort to improve wages for care workers. This has already started happening in other nations within the EU, but it has been slow to pick up in Austria, as the live-in care model is still the preferred method of care.
Linz, a city in Upper Austria, has been the testing ground for the future that many believe will hit a surge as early as 2033. Though they have over 1,900 nursing home beds, 10% over the necessary quota, it is believed that the way forward will be through privately funded in-home care, with integration into the greater LTC system.
Relying on this system to be the solution for the elder care issue will be a massive challenge for Austria to surmount. There is still a great deal of work to be done to ensure all parties involved are taken care of properly as workers will need to be compensated fairly, patients will need to have access to care, and families will need to have peace of mind that their loved ones will live out their twilight years with dignity. Austria’s issues notwithstanding, continued use of migrant care workers will need to reach some kind of balance, to ensure that the nations being left behind will not suffer any further care drain that may turn out to be irreplaceable. In short, to solve an issue such as the collective aging of the EU, it will take the effort of every nation within the EU to come up with a solution.
