Page 3872 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 October 2005
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speaking backgrounds, were often not directly addressed. Nonetheless, those women did benefit generally from the work that unions did.
Women have, as we know, in unions and elsewhere, struggled for a long time to achieve improvements in their working conditions. They still, on the whole, face unequal pay and discrimination in the workplace, and that is often related to where women are most concentrated. An issue that has become huge in the last few years is childcare. Childcare is still largely unaffordable to all but those on high wages. Many women have to weigh up whether it is worth it for them to take that job because the costs of childcare will bite into their wages so much that really they are just working because they love working, not for the money. That is an issue that I will not be able to address strongly here, but I think it is a very important one.
What should be basic rights for women and others are now threatened by the government’s proposed changes. Many of these rights, such as equal pay and parental rights, have been attained by collective bargaining and by union advocacy in test cases. In the last few years, under the leadership of Jennie George and Sharan Burrow, the unions have excelled in the area of basic rights, something that the Howard government will erode with the dismantling of union powers and the move to individual contracts. Many women will be severely affected by the removal of unfair dismissal protection, the reduction in minimum conditions and reduced access to collective bargaining.
The majority of women work in workplaces with fewer than 100 employees. They will now be exempt from unfair dismissal laws. As the ACTU ads point out, women with childcare responsibilities cannot be as flexible as employers may like. I have had direct experience of this. One of my staff had two young children in childcare. On a number of days she was unable to come to work because one of her children had a runny nose, a slight infection, and could not go to childcare. I am a flexible employer. That was fine. But I do not know how many employers would take that into account. Children do get sick. It is not good if women have to hide the fact that their child is sick so they can go to childcare that day. That is not good for other children. I must say that children in childcare do get sick quite often because they come in touch with every little germ that is going around. How are women who are parents of young children going to survive this regime?
Conditions such as overtime, leave loading, long service leave, parental leave, higher pay rates for late and weekend hours are no longer included in the minimum safety net. The lack of these conditions will impact disproportionately on working women, many of whom are in part-time or casual work. We will see women disadvantaged by individually negotiated contracts. Due to their socialisation, many women are not as good at standing up for their rights, and that is particularly so for women at the lower income end and women who are of non-English speaking backgrounds.
We expect that the welfare to work provisions that are pushing sole parents, who are usually women, back into the workplace will exacerbate this situation. Working mothers are more likely to be taking part-time or casual positions where pay loadings will no longer be guaranteed. We already know, according to Roy Morgan Research, that only three per cent of 14 to 17-year-olds and four per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds express support for the proposed IR reforms. They already have a difficult time in the workplace. The young people who participated in focus groups articulated high levels of anxiety at
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