Page 1396 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 3 May 2016
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Traditionally, one of the primary rationales for long service leave has been to enable employees partway through their working life to recover their energies and return to work renewed, refreshed and reinvigorated. This means positive impacts on employees’ health and wellbeing, and those impacts improve the effectiveness at work and, therefore, productivity.
This objective has become increasingly important in Australia because workers are spending longer proportions of their lifetimes in employment. A related trend is that growing numbers of workers are remaining in the workforce through to older ages, and the federal policy has sought to encourage this trend with policies in regard to superannuation, tax and aged pension eligibility.
This trend for longer lifetimes in employment means that it is becoming more important than ever before for employees to have sustained periods of recovery and renewal from work during their working lives. However, this trend is on a collision course with another major trend in the labour force—mobility. Australian workers are highly mobile between employers as a result of changing career patterns, rapidly shifting sectoral labour demand and the demand for workplace flexibility that has resulted in a significant increase in casual and part-time employment. Almost one in five workers have been employed by their current employer for less than one year.
Labour mobility also has major implications for access to long service leave because 10 years is the standard qualifying period for long service leave. Three in four workers remain with their employer for less than 10 years, including many who have been in the workforce for much longer. The low prevalence of long-term employment relationships limits access to long service leave entitlements to a fraction of the Australian workforce.
In response to this situation, portable long service leave schemes have emerged for a number of limited occupations. In the ACT the building and construction scheme came into effect in 1981, and an equivalent scheme exists in most states and territories. A contract cleaning scheme was introduced in the ACT in 2000, followed by the community sector scheme in 2010 and the security scheme in 2013.
Madam Speaker, waste workers fall within the electricity, gas, water and waste services division of the Australia and New Zealand standard industrial classification, commonly known as the ANZSIC. This is a high-need industry with 48 per cent of employees possessing more than 10 years experience in the industry but often not being eligible for traditional long service leave. This is usually because they have moved between employers and usually not voluntarily. The majority of waste vehicle drivers in a particular area stay on with their new employers after a change of contract, and under this legislation, this unfortunate situation will no longer occur.
We know a great deal about the characteristics of aged-care workers both in the ACT and nation-wide. The workforce is dominated by older women with a higher proportion holding post-school qualifications and a growing number born overseas. Both community and residential aged-care services employ direct care workers, including nurse practitioners, registered nurses, enrolled nurses, personal community care attendants, allied health professionals and allied health assistants.
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