Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

recognises the damaging impact upon Australian working women as a result of the federal Government’s WorkChoices legislation;

(2)

recognises in particular the contribution Australian women make to workplaces and households across the country;

(3)

takes immediate action to restore employment protection for women in the workforce;

(4)

takes particular action to provide employment protection to women adversely affected by the WorkChoices legislation; and

(5)

notes the Howard Government’s agenda to reduce employment conditions and employment security for women in the workforce.

I have moved this motion today to bring to the attention of the House some impacts of the government’s Work Choices legislation on the working women of Australia. In particular, I want to firstly acknowledge the important and significant role that women in the workforce play in ensuring a sufficient and productive workforce, which is so critical to the nation’s economic wellbeing. The workforce participation rate has become, and will continue to be, an important challenge for government as the population ages and the responsibility on working people to support a significant proportion of the population beyond working age increases. We are already aware of the impacts that this dynamic can have on the birthrate and also of the potentially damaging cycle of decreasing population growth with an ageing demographic.

As women entered the workforce in greater numbers over recent decades, it became clear that they and their families needed additional support in order to facilitate a balance between working and caring responsibilities. We are all aware of the growing significance of challenges such as the provision of child care in addressing this issue. However, two of the most significant issues for women in considering the amount and type of work they undertake are the predictability of working hours and the conditions under which they work. These are the issues that I believe are undermined by the new legislation and which could actually work to push women out of the workforce or to force them to make undesirable choices between work and family responsibilities.

Australia already has a lower participation rate for women in the workforce—57.1 per cent—in comparison to other OECD countries, whilst the percentage of women employed in part-time work is higher than the average. Of most concern is that 55 per cent of women in part-time work are, in fact, employed on a casual basis and 43 per cent of these indicated in ABS data that they wanted to work more hours and were frustrated by a lack of opportunities to access training and career progression.

Earlier this year I surveyed my electorate to ask people about the challenges they face in balancing work and family responsibilities. It is the biggest response I have had to any survey of the electorate. It clearly indicated that, for many people, this was becoming an increasing problem. Most commonly, I read the comments that people had sent back which indicated that they were concerned about the capacity to plan for their family responsibilities, given the unpredictability of work responsibilities. Comments on this problem were consistent in the survey responses. One constituent wrote:

Even though I’m an experienced senior worker, because I work part time I’ve been given only minor, unchallenging work to do and have not received any workplace training in the last three years.

Another wrote:

I have to work part-time only due to the long hours my husband is now expected to work and I am unable to really pursue a career as I have to take all the responsibility for the children and household needs.

What we can see from these few examples is that families are already struggling to balance these competing demands.

I should acknowledge that some of the respondents wrote to me with very high praise for their employer’s commitment to provide flexibility to people who needed to look after children, elderly parents and so on, but it was interesting to note that these were, almost without exception, large local companies. It is clear that they had the capacity to provide some flexibility, and they should be commended for this.

A significant number of people, as I have outlined, had real problems when clashes arose between their work and family responsibilities. They made comments that talked about their ‘fear’ of seeking time off, their concern about loss of shifts if they did this, and many indicated that requests were simply refused. Many people talked about the guilt they felt about putting increasing pressures on their parents to assist with crises, such as sick children. Many of the respondents were shiftworkers and indicated that they could not access child care during the appropriate hours.

Women work, on average, in lower skilled, lower paid and lower reliability jobs generally across the retail, services and personal care sectors. They are amongst the most exposed to the new legislation, with its unbridled capacity to undermine their rights to reliable and predictable hours, fair and safe working conditions, fair access to leave and decent payment for their work. There are no doubt individual examples of women with high-demand skills and superior competency in self-representation, but they are far outweighed by women who are vulnerable in the low-skill occupations and who are afraid to assert their powers without collective rights. (Time expired)

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