The safety of people with disability will be at risk under workplace proposals being considered as part of the roll out of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Disability advocates believe a plan to radically cut conditions for disability support workers will result in increased levels of abuse and neglect of Australia's most vulnerable people.
Advocates and unions claim workers' rights are under attack in the Fair Work Commission where employers are seeking to reduce minimum shifts, remove regular hours for part-time employees and increase hours without paying penalties.
Employers have argued award conditions need to be reformed to meet the demand for more flexible services under the NDIS which started to roll out across Australia last month.
Matthew Bowden, co-chief executive of peak advocacy group People With Disability Australia, has raised concerns that the erosion of conditions could lead to co-called zero hours contracts where an employer can vary an employee's hours, anywhere from full-time to zero hours with no notice.
The contracts have been controversial in the UK and were banned under legislation passed in New Zealand this year.
Mr Bowden said the Uber-style approach was unlikely to attract workers to a sector which needs to more than double to 150,000 by 2020 when the NDIS roll out is complete.
He said a high rates of casualisation and poor conditions for workers may pose a risk to their clients.
"There is considerable evidence linking underpaid, unmotivated, undervalued staff to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability especially those living in residential institutions or receiving personal care in their own homes," he wrote in a submission to the Fair Work Commission.
Mr Bowden rejected the argument that employers were being forced to downgrade conditions to deliver flexible services under the NDIS which aims to offer more choice and control to participants.
"I think it's driven by the interests of service providers who prioritise profit over quality services," he said.
Australian Services Union NSW deputy branch secretary Judith Wright said workers were committed to more flexible practices but not at the expense of their conditions.
Research by RMIT University academics Fiona Macdonald and Sara Charlesworth found disability organisations believed prices set by the Federal Government for one-to-one assistance under the NDIS are too low.
"CEOs and senior managers in large and small organisations told us they could not afford to provide direct care and support services with the level of funding they received under the NDIS," they wrote.
The research identified concerns around recruiting appropriately qualified support workers.
"Some providers reported they had responded to increases in demand at peak times by recruiting, as the regional manager of one large service provider organisation put it, 'anyone standing'."
Dr Macdonald and Prof Charlesworth found: "The light-touch regulation of the quality of care delivery . . . may work to undermine the viability of the NDIS over the long term."
The $22 billion NDIS, being rolled out over the next three years, will support 460,000 Australians with a disability but a royal commission heard last month that national safeguards were yet to be determined.
The Fair Work Commission has not yet set a date for a decision on proposed reforms to the award which covers disability support workers.
