Page 3924 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 5 December 2007
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concept of a job for life is now rare. Many more workers are on temporary, short-term and casual contracts. Workers can have several employers at once or over the period of a year. Those in full-time employment are working longer hours with less paid overtime. Penalty rates for out-of-hours and weekend work are at risk.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics Labour mobility publication records that, in February 2006, 57.7 per cent of Australians had been in their current job for five years or less, and 75.3 per cent for 10 years or less. Most significantly, over 21 per cent had been in their current job for less than one year. These figures reflect that even in current times when unemployment is at historically low levels many Canberrans do not get to take long service leave and many people never even reach their pro rata entitlement.
We now have the situation where people are working longer hours under increased pressure to be more productive but with little or no job security. The increased stress, pressure and uncertainty in the workplace add up to a case that there is a greater need for workers to have access to leave, but many miss out altogether on long service leave, even though they work continuously for much more than 10 or 15 years at a time.
More than 90 per cent of employment growth over the last 20 years has been in casual and contract work that does not accrue long service leave. So the work patterns are changing, often with the aim of reducing costs by minimising workers’ entitlements. But this does not remove the obligation on society to provide just outcomes for these workers. This bill creates a level playing field for employers, rules out the minimisation of long service leave entitlements to make an enterprise more competitive and will make private sector employment a fairer place to be.
The ABS employee earnings, benefits and trade union membership survey shows that, of the 97,723 private sector workers in the ACT, 34,000 are part-time employees—a good example of the changing nature of the working world. For workers in the public sector, long service leave is an important employment condition. Not only are they entitled to 13 weeks long service leave after 10 years, but the condition is portable. A public sector worker carries their entitlement with them across ACT departments and agencies, between the ACT and commonwealth public sectors and even from other states and the Northern Territory.
The ABS informs us that there are about 77,000 public sector workers and about 98,000 workers who, with the exception of the building and construction industry and contract cleaning industry, miss out on portable long service leave. Is this fair? These starkly different conditions are another element of the difficulties faced by private sector employers in the competition to attract skilled employees.
An examination of the ACT public sector management standards shows that, when considering long service leave portability for ACT public servants, the list of public service departments and agencies here, in the commonwealth and across the country extends to 799 agencies as well as every school, university and hospital in the country. The list includes zoos, railways, banks, quarries, art galleries, TABs, bus and rail systems, film corporations, state rifle associations, local government and airlines. The commonwealth list is simpler and extends long service leave portability to any
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