Page 1747 - Week 06 - Thursday, 30 July 2020
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(c) the intention of the Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) Act 2009 is to ensure workers not in the public sector will be able to have their long service leave transferred from one employer to another;
(2) further notes:
(a) the ACT Government has included industries, such as building and construction, contract cleaning, community sector and security, in the Portable Long Service Leave Scheme;
(b) there are other trades, such as hairdressing, where workers change employers without changing industries; and
(c) hairdressers and employees of other sectors who have a high churn of employers but stay within their relevant industry; and
(3) calls on the Government to:
(a) work with Hair Stylists Australia, the ACT hairdressing industry, employers, employees, employee bodies and registered training organisations to determine how to include hairdressing in the Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) Act 2009; and
(b) investigate extending the Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) Act 2009 to other non-public sector industries.
Many years ago, a very brave Labor member of this place had a vision that all non-public sector employees would have portability of their long service leave entitlements. That member was former Speaker and member for Ginninderra, Mr Wayne Berry. Since his brave vision, we now have the Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) Act 2009, which has brought together four industries where we know employee churn is high. Today, I call on Minister Orr to look at how we can include hairdressers and other non-public sector employees in this scheme.
As I often say in this place, I am a hairdresser. I have also owned a hairdressing salon. I know what it is like to be on both ends of the employment relationship. I also know a large number of hairdressers—both employees and employers—and, as with industries such as community services, hairdressing has a high percentage of women who work in it.
We know women’s work is traditionally lower paid, less secure and more temporary. The project to fix that has been running for decades—decades too long. We already know that most women take a break in their career due to caring responsibilities, whether that be after having a baby or to care for loved ones. So it is not reasonable that they are also disadvantaged when it comes to access to leave entitlements, particularly long service leave entitlements.
As we are all painfully aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused stress for many people; but it has been really tough on those in insecure work. We also need to acknowledge that hairdressers are predominantly women and that women have been particularly hard hit by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Providing opportunities for support workers in high-churn industries to access their leave entitlements seems like a pretty reasonable thing to do—to me, it does.
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