Page 3178 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 9 November 2021
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(2) acknowledges the:
(a) work that has already been done by the ACT Government to establish successful portable long service leave schemes for a number of industries, such as construction, contract cleaning, community sector and security; and
(b) commitment from the ACT Government to work with Hair Stylists Australia to develop portable long service leave for hairdressers; and
(3) calls on the ACT Government to:
(a) expand the Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) Act 2009 to include the contract catering industry and report on the progress of this to the Assembly by June 2022; and
(b) investigate further industries for inclusion in portable long service leave schemes such as the hospitality industry. This investigative work should be undertaken in consultation with relevant trade unions and other stakeholders to ensure more workers receive fair entitlements.
As all members of this place would be aware, we are in an era of increasing casualisation, short-term and insecure work. Workers’ rights are under threat, and corporate entities are coming up with increasingly creative ways to avoid their responsibilities to their workers.
As a government, we have a responsibility to make sure that our laws address this. As work has, unfortunately, become more casualised and short term, we need to do everything we can to protect working people from the obvious harms of these changes. Workers can and should expect to be compensated for their hard work with appropriate wages and conditions, and long service leave is an essential part of that compensation.
Long service leave is something that many of us look forward to and plan our futures around. It is key to protecting the work-life balance. It plays a role in making sure that workers’ physical and mental health is not damaged by endless years of work with no reprieve.
Right now, many members of our community do not have access to long service leave. Increasingly, people are not staying with the same employer for long periods of time. In fact, only one in four Australians stay with the same employer for 10 years or more. This means that a huge proportion of our community are not able to access long service leave.
Often people hardest hit by this limited access are people who are already economically disadvantaged. More often than not, it is women and people from diverse backgrounds who work in casualised industries, or industries where it is common to move jobs frequently—industries like catering and hospitality.
The ACT has taken some great steps to protect workers’ rights in the past, ensuring that construction workers, community sector workers, contract cleaners and security workers all have access to portable long service leave. This scheme has been a great
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