Page 965 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 25 February 2009
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Australian Bureau of Statistics data indicates that federal enterprise agreements cover approximately 26 per cent of workers in Australia. Of these, around 40 per cent include paid maternity leave provisions. The bulk of workers under these agreements are employed in public sector or education-related fields, two major markets in the ACT. As such, in the public sector labour market where the ACT competes directly with the Australian public service, maintaining or enhancing the ACT public service’s relative position in paid maternity leave is important.
In this regard, most federal and state agencies offer between 12 and 14 weeks paid leave. However, significant increases have been made in the tertiary sector, which offers 20 or more weeks paid leave, and a select number of federal agencies are looking to radically extend their provisions. For example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics is currently negotiating for a possible 26 weeks.
The number of instances of maternity leave in the ACT public service per year over the last five years has averaged between 300 and 350, trending slightly upwards. In relative terms, this is not particularly high, given that as at 30 June 2008 there were, according to the Commissioner for Public Administration’s 2007-08 workforce profile, 12,463 women in the ACT public service. Nevertheless, it is a significant chunk of our workforce, and for these 300 to 350 mothers, access to paid maternity leave is extremely important to them and their families.
Not surprisingly, the instance of maternity leave is concentrated for women between the ages of 25 and 39 years, peaking at between 30 to 34 years. This is despite a relative dip in the representation of women in the workforce for this age group. The average period of leave from the workplace for ACT government female employees is 38 weeks, with 23 weeks made up of maternity leave—paid, half paid and unpaid—and the remainder made up of other types of paid leave—for example, annual leave, long service leave et cetera.
Resignations from the ACT public service of women returning from maternity leave are around 20 per cent and higher than the overall turnover rate of women of 15 per cent. There are also marked differences in separation levels depending on occupation and classification. For example, separation rates for teachers and nurses after maternity leave are generally lower, while separation rates for employees in lower paid classifications are generally higher. This data points to the work-life stresses experienced by mothers, and extended paid maternity leave is one possible response to this dilemma.
It is true that extending paid maternity leave within the ACT public service may marginally increase the fertility rate, although this is difficult to calculate without significant modelling of behaviours and demographic shift. However, it is thought that the impact on the ACT public service will be marginal in the medium to long term, particularly if other employers in the future extend their provisions in response to the Productivity Commission’s recommendations.
Equally, it is problematic to measure the degree to which additional maternity leave entitlements may impact upon attraction and retention rates or translate into increased
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