Work changes that will hurt women : Melbourne Indymedia

Spotlight's floor staff are mainly female. Unlike the men at the Cowra abattoir, they have not been able to fight off this challenge through union strength or public campaigning. Instead, the Prime Minister has expressed satisfaction with this outcome, saying that it is the intended result of WorkChoices because it is what the economy needs.

Women are a large proportion of low-income earners in Australia and are disproportionately employed in industries such as retail, clerical and community services and in part-time and casual work. We are all familiar with the data on women's under-representation in management, on boards, and in higher level positions in the workforce. We know that among the factors involved in this are women's acceptance of primary responsibility for child care and the persistence of discriminatory practices and stereotypes in the workplace.

This translates into women's concentration in lower paid segments of the workforce, and means that WorkChoices will have a disproportionate impact on them, through the process of removing award conditions and reducing pay.

This will affect not only new employees at Spotlight, but will flow through to existing employees. When their protection under existing enterprise bargaining agreements expires over the next two to three years, they may be offered AWAs on similar terms to the new employees, and the conditions of the whole Spotlight workforce will have been reduced. This employer appears to care very little for quality of service.

WorkChoices has other effects that will have an impact on women's positions in the workforce, affecting them in all occupational areas. The privatisation of the details of employment contracts into AWAs will make it much more difficult to determine whether sex discrimination in pay practices is occurring either directly, or indirectly through the use of job classification to isolate women to lower paid classifications.

In a workforce dominated by AWAs, it will be virtually impossible to determine whether sex discrimination in pay or conditions is occurring. Thus a side effect of these changes is the demise of structures for equality at work built up through hard work and campaigning over decades. It will not be necessary to directly repeal them, they simply cease being usable.

At risk in future are other gains for women. If the WorkChoices legislation is upheld by the High Court, then the Commonwealth will be empowered to take over other areas of workforce regulation of great significance for working women.

State sex discrimination and equal pay legislation may be taken over in the same way and, given its policy position in relation to women, we cannot expect this Federal Government to strengthen or improve protection of the human right to non-discrimination. Instead, temptation to "deregulate" in the interests of business could prevail.

Finally, these changes dovetail with the Welfare to Work changes with a particular sting for women. Since work has become relatively less attractive to people receiving social security, the Government had to create a stick to require people to take these jobs. Reporting recently has pointed out that Family Tax Benefit Part B is paid to families with a non-working parent, with no means test, no maximum family income cut out, and no limit to children below the age of eight.

Katherine Swinbourne of the Council for Single Mothers and Their Children pointed out that this encourages women to stay out of the workforce and to let their employment skills degrade.

However, pity the non-working mother whose marriage breaks up after her youngest child is eight. Loss of Family Tax Benefit B will be the least of her problems. She will not be able to rely on sole parents benefit, but will have to move directly on to Newstart allowance and satisfy a work test, which will require her to take one of these low-paid jobs even if she can earn only $25 more a week than social security would pay. More than four in five sole parents are female so this rule has a clear impact on mothers whose marriages break down.

What is the result of the combined WorkChoices and Welfare to Work changes?

Most women's pay and conditions are likely to be reduced, along with the ability to challenge employment and pay discrimination, undermining and discouraging women's employment.

Women are to be subsidised to stay at home and care for their children provided they are also caring for a spouse. But when a marriage breaks up, then they must work, regardless of the children's needs. This system will have contributed to undermining their workforce skills, making it more likely they will have to take low-paid, low-skilled work.

Is this a return to the days of the traditional male breadwinner and female homemaker, no longer dominant in the Australian community, but favoured by government welfare and employment policies?

Beth Gaze is associate professor in the law faculty of the University of Melbourne.

From her bio at University of Melbourne Law School where she is an Associate Professor:
Beth Gaze teaches and researches in anti-discrimination law, feminist legal thought, and administrative law including tribunal procedures. Her primary research interest is in equality law, including anti-discrimination rights with a focus on employment and work-family conflict.

2 Cents an Hour
by By Mel Martin Thursday June 15, 2006 at 01:36 AM
Repost from Coffs Harbour Advocate 27 May 2006

WHEN Annette Harris faced having to give up nearly all her entitlements for a measly two-cents-per-hour pay rise, she wasn’t about to take it lying down.

For two years, ‘the wool lady’ has worked hard for the Coffs Harbour Spotlight store, turning up 30 minutes early for her shifts, and building a strong relationship with her regular customers.

So when she read the Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA) she was offered, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

Under Spotlight’s workplace agreement, penalty and overtime payments and other benefits have been replaced with a pay rise of just two cents an hour, from $14.28 to $14.30 per hour. The AWA has done away with maximum or minimum shift lengths, caps on the number of consecutive days worked, minimum breaks between shifts, rest pauses, rostered days off, incentive-based payments and bonuses, and annual leave loading, and gives the employer the right to ask staff to work extra hours at any time.

The AWA also has no provision for a wage increase over its fiveyear life.

"It’s so wrong, so unfair," Annette said.

"I work really hard for Spotlight.

"I’ve always done the right thing by them, but I feel all they care about is their bottom line.

"I love my job, we’re moving the store up the hill soon and I want to be there for that, but I won’t be bulldozed."

Under the Federal Government’s new WorkChoices legislation introduced this year, Spotlight’s AWA is completely legal and above board.

"Our AWA obviously meets all of the WorkChoices require- ments, which includes all those five minimum conditions of wages and leave, etcetera," Spotlight general manager of marketing Jono Gelfand said.

"It’s that starting point. So, based on the retail skills in the market forces for that store, they obviously negotiate the rate one-on-one with that employee."

But Spotlight’s AWA has the NSW secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association, Gerard Dwyer, fuming.

"This is the new law of the jungle sponsored by the Howard Government," he said.

"Spotlight employees are people, not commodities.

"Under WorkChoices, these AWAs will create second-class employees who receive less for performing the same work.

"All Australians are now on notice, fairness has no place under these radical workplace laws."

Annette has no beef with her direct manager, who she says is not responsible for the AWA, but she wants to stand up not just for herself — she has no plans to sign the AWA and can’t be forced to — but also for younger staff who may feel pressured.

"I don’t want the store to lose sales," Annette said.

"I told my manager ‘please don’t be upset with me, you would do the same thing’, but we were sup- posed to be no worse off with the new laws.

"These laws are scary, it’s going to affect you, it’s going to affect everybody.

"I always believe you’ve got to lead by example.

"If you want change, you’ve got to stick your neck out. They picked on the wrong person."

Labor took Annette’s case to Parliament, where Prime Minister John Howard, who spent $55 million worth of advertising telling Australians that his new system would be fairer, dismissed concerns over the contract.

"At the end of the day, the test of workplace relations laws is the contribution they make to the economy," he told Parliament.

That comment has outraged Annette — a lifetime Liberal voter now turned ex-Liberal voter.

"How dare he make comments like that sitting in his ivory tower," she said.

"You come and work in my shoes for one day, John Howard.

"Without us, the workers, you haven’t got a job, without us, you haven’t got an economy."

RESEARCHING WOMEN’S WAGES AND CONDITIONS

Women’s organisations will make a research based submission to the Fair Pay Commission on the differential between male and female wages and working conditions.

The National Foundation for Australian Women successfully intervened in the 2005 debates on Welfare to Work, with research it had commissioned from the National Centre for Economic and Social Modelling (NATSEM) on the impacts of proposed policy changes on sole parents and women with a disability.

Now NFAW and the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) have joined with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) to benchmark women’s wages and conditions.

The first part of the study (jointly financed with HREOC) will develop the first publicly available national data base on current awards and conditions for women, especially focussed on vulnerable groups of women such as migrants, young women, and women with a disability.

A contract has been let with WiSER (the Women in Economic and Social Research consortium) to undertake this phase of the study and its report will be publicly available by October 2006. One product will be a Women’s Employment Status Key Indicators (WISKI), against which another later study can identify changes.

The NFAW, and the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) now want to raise $75,000.00 to expand their joint research studies into women’s wages and conditions.

The second phase, for which funds are now being sought, will conduct in depth interviews with women workers, across six States. The interviews will explore the specific experiences of the women, and their own knowledge and understandings of the industrial relations system, awards, and bargaining.

WEL and NFAW are in discussion with several other national community organisations to form a consortium to manage the interview phase of the research.

Jenny Earle, speaking on behalf of WEL, said “This research will enable us to identify the impacts on women of changes to our workplace relations framework. Women generally have less bargaining power at work so safety net pay and conditions are vital. It will be great to have more detailed and reliable national data on women’s employment experiences.”

Marie Coleman, speaking on behalf of NFAW said ‘ we are committed to having a sound research base on which to develop social policy analysis. These studies will give us all an un-biased view of how working women’s wages and conditions are changing.’

Donations to the NFAW are tax deductible. Donations should be marked “workplace study” and sent to the NFAW.

Further comment- Jenny Earle 0412 159 901
Marie Coleman 041 4483067

For information about the research, and how to donate, go to
http://www.nfaw.org or call 02 4422 2208
Write to NFAW P.O. Box 5009 NOWRA DC NSW 2541

29/06/2006