Page 1064 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 16 March 2005
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employed, and indeed in relation to most part-time workers, there is an extensive negotiation about availability and a genuine effort to ensure certainty and predictability of employment.
However, the capacity to negotiate hours and shifts varies widely, depending on the stance and compassion of management and supervisors and the skills and resistance of employees. A negotiated outcome and maximum notice of shifts and hours relates closely to the satisfaction of employees. That is good management. But when a government agency acts to legitimise the unfair work practices of a few, concern must be expressed about the arrangements advocated by the OEA.
In most current workplace agreements, there is a significant difference between part-time and casual work in relation to the regularity of hours and security of employment. The proposals of the OEA make this difference illusory. Rather than ensuring job security and addressing underemployment and the work-life balance of casuals, this proposal downshifts, making balance harder to achieve for part and full-time workers.
The model makes all forms of employment unpredictable and challenges the very basis of work-life balance for the work force. No one presumes that the achievement of work and family balance is a role of government alone. It requires a genuine and deep commitment from business, from workers, from unions and from communities to work together to secure mutually and communally beneficial outcomes.
Surely it is fair to reason that government will not actively prevent this work by entrenching unpredictable and anti-family conditions into conditions of employment. The benefits to society and to the economy of achieving family-friendly workplace practices that allow flexibility and a genuine realisation of work-life balance are clear. It provides for increased productivity, long-term sustainability of economic growth, a healthy and active workforce and vibrant communities.
Achieving a balance between work and life is a difficult task, and one for our community, our businesses, our unions and our government. The actions of the OEA, a federal government agency, in advocating the use of employment contracts such as these represents an abrogation of responsibility for this task. There is clearly an element of choice in the negotiation of employment contracts. However, use of the term is little more than a rhetorical flourish without consideration of the context in which the choice is exercised.
Governments should work to ensure genuine choice of employment when engaging in contractual arrangements. Governments must secure a differential between those workers who genuinely choose to work long hours and those for whom long hours are not a choice, but a dictate. Governments must allow for the choice to work part time, without prejudice, in the form of training opportunities, promotion or workplace conditions. Governments should allow casuals who have been working regularly for an extended period of time the choice to move to part-time work and receive the conditions, regularity and security of that kind of work. Governments with an interest in social cohesion and a sustainable economic growth must respond to these concerns and work to achieve a balance between work and life in our community that exists in realty and not just on a time sheet.
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