Page 1098 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 16 March 2005
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limited time available I will draw to the attention of members of the Assembly some of the material that has been put out by the employment advocate. In particular, they have produced a publication related to workplace agreements. They have surveyed employers and workplaces to see what people think. What they say is contrary to the suggestion that these hours are all the issue. According to the people they surveyed, sound business decisions drove their family-friendly arrangements; the flexible hours proved to be the most popular family-friendly provision amongst interviewees; and many financially-based benefits—such as pay, parental leave and childcare support—assisted employers in recruiting and retaining quality staff.
Whom did they survey? Were they BHP and people like that? No, they were not; they were people like the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia, the maritime college, Crafty Kids—a small Adelaide firm—the Kyeema Centre in Portland, the radiation oncology group in Sydney and the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority. I will hold my comments for today on that organisation, but the others to me represent a pretty good mix of people to ask how the methods of flexibility have been working under the AWAs.
The Adelaide Casino is in there too. They have set up an arrangement for employees to be able to access part of their annual leave as single days—so they have given them options there. They have found that that has been enormously well received by the employees. It allows the employees to negotiate additional unpaid leave each year. Because their salary is averaged over the year—this terrible thing of averaging—employees receive slightly less each week and, in addition to their 20 days paid regular leave each year, they can have another 20 days programmed.
At the Kyeema Centre in Portland the staff work in a very demanding environment. In conducting a review of services and remodelling them based on client needs, the centre’s management asked staff to consider what was best for them and their positions. They said, “What about more regular time off without pay?” A message has come through from their experience. They said that it has been a brilliantly successful measure of flexibility because they have certainty in planning breaks. Their system has been in place for some years and the staff is happy with regular and extra time off. The staff is happy. It seems that the only people who have a problem with this are the trade union movement, because they are finding that people are less reliant on them.
The days of having to be intimidated or exploited and having nowhere to go other than to a union official are behind us in this country. There are rogue employers—I would be the first to acknowledge that—and there are rogue employees, but I think we now have a modern system reflective of modern industrial practice. We go on to others, such as Radiation Oncology of Sydney, where they brought in paid maternity leave because there was a shortage of staff. The management there believes that the family-friendly AWAs are crucial to their business. The list goes on.
The resolution as proposed does a grave injustice, in my view, to the Office of the Employment Advocate; it does a grave injustice to the large number of Australian people who are enjoying the benefit of flexible working arrangements and AWAs; and it does a gross disservice to the many employers who have embarked on formalising these arrangements and put in the time, effort and hours to understand what people who work in their businesses really want. I know that from personal experience. I am sorry to see
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