Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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)

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to make a contribution to the motion moved by the member for Cunningham on women in the workforce. The contention on which the member for Cunningham has based this motion is false. The assertions made in the motion are false. About the only point in the entire motion that I can agree with is the recognition of the contribution Australian women make to workplaces and households across the country. We all recognise that. In fact, the government also recognises that and has provided the very flexibilities, as well as protections, that many women need through the Work Choices legislation. I will go through some of those in a short while. This motion is just one more example of the Labor Party’s preparedness to use falsehoods in an attempt to get attention for their absurd claims about this government’s workplace relations changes.

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Queensland regional centres with the Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations.

De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely.

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In fact, we visited the electorate of the member for Dawson. We had a most enlightening experience in all the towns that we went through. One of the things that came out clearly in every town we went through is how the employees and the employers were able to sit down and negotiate the arrangements which suited their interests. Whether it was through a unionised collective agreement, a non-unionised collective agreement or AWAs, we saw through those visits that flexibility was in place and was being enjoyed by both parties in the workplace. In some cases, the arrangements had been negotiated with the support of the union movement. I had a bit of a smile on my face in one location when the union movement was involved in helping the negotiations but, at the end of the day, not one of the employees decided to join the union. I am not sure what happened there but that, once again, demonstrates that there was choice.

Since March 27, when Work Choices came in, 205,00 new jobs have been created—increased jobs, increased opportunities for Australians. Over 1,000 jobs per day have been created since March 27. Those on the other side might have had a memory lapse. They told us this time last year, as Work Choices was being negotiated, that it was going to result in mass sackings and that the more vulnerable people in our community would be the first to go. In fact, the reverse has taken place: we have seen 205,000 new jobs. Let us contrast that with the average for the last 20 years. The average for the last 20 years, for a comparable period of time, has been a growth of 79,000 jobs. This year we have seen a growth of 205,000 jobs. It is no mere coincidence. Most of those jobs—184,000 of them—have been full-time jobs. So we have seen record low unemployment and record high levels of participation. That is the truth of the matter rather than the distortions of the other side.

The member for Cunningham mentioned that the participation rate amongst women in Australia is low compared to other nations around the world. It may be low compared to other nations around the world, but it is increasing and it is improving with every week and every month that goes by. The member for Cunningham contradicted herself when she said the part-time average of participation in Australia is at the higher end. I would have thought that part-time and casual employment—which the member for Cunningham alluded to—is a choice that a lot of women make as a way of balancing the competing demands of being at home and also being at work. Women in Australia, in many cases, are choosing part-time and casual employment as a way of meeting those very burdensome demands which are often expected of them in society, especially as they take the greatest load in most families.

Under this government, the number of women in employment has reached a record high. Women have achieved higher wages and access to greater flexibilities through a wide range of innovative working arrangements previously not available through awards. An award was very prescriptive. No matter what company you were working in, it would say that these conditions would apply and it would not take into consideration seasonal conditions, seasonal demands or things such as consumer demand for products or services, which may fluctuate from year to year. Since March 1996 the number of women in employment has increased by over one million. (Time expired.)

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would firstly like to congratulate the member for Cunningham on giving the House an opportunity to debate the impact of the government’s Work Choices legislation on Australian working women. Trying to balance work and family commitments is an ongoing challenge in most women’s lives. Often, these two commitments pull us in two different directions. As mothers, partners, carers and breadwinners, women often face different pressures to men. In turn, their specific needs are often also different. The ongoing contribution that Australian women make to the workplace and to households across this country must certainly never be underestimated or undervalued. Despite the critical role they play in both the family and at work, women have always had to fight for their rights to social and economic parity. The women who are most susceptible and most vulnerable to the government’s extreme Work Choices legislation are those who remain socially and financially disadvantaged and disempowered in our community. It is therefore our responsibility to recognise their plight and to fight for their rights.

This government refuses to recognise the enormous damage that its Work Choices legislation is doing and the additional difficulties that countless Australian women now face as a result of this legislation. If it were ever fair dinkum about helping women balance their work and family life in a way that protects the health and wellbeing of their families, then it would never have introduced this piece of extreme legislation and it would immediately restore employment protection for women adversely affected by the grossly misnamed Work Choices.

One of the most damaging aspects of Work Choices is the introduction of AWAs that erode security and protection in the workplace for workers, both women and men but particularly women. Under Work Choices, employers can force workers into accepting AWAs that remove conditions and safety nets from awards negotiated and fought for over a period of many years. Evidence of this can be found in ABS statistics released in June this year which show that some 90 per cent of AWAs struck since this government’s IR changes began involve the removal of at least one condition and require longer working hours, meaning less time for family and less room for women to balance the different demands of work and family life. Such is the skewed nature of the Work Choices legislation that employers are now able to impose terms and conditions and to bully and threaten their workers into accepting these terms and conditions that make balancing work and family commitments increasingly impossible.

Research shows that women are more likely to accept pay and conditions without negotiation, are less confident about negotiating individual contracts and are more likely to be forced onto AWA’s because they leave and re-enter the workforce more frequently than men due to family responsibilities. As women are largely concentrated in retail, clerical, hospitality and community services industries, Work Choices will have a disproportionate impact on them through the process of removing award conditions and reducing pay in what are already lower paid jobs. Under AWA’s, penalty rates are often lost, annual leave and sick leave are traded off, very few agreements make provision for paid maternity leave and the gender pay gap is widened, with women on AWA’s receiving only 80 per cent of the hourly rate of men. Equally troubling is the way protections against discrimination are now at risk of being undermined by this legislation. The privatisation of employment contract details in AWA’s will make it much harder to determine whether sex discrimination in pay practices is occurring, either directly or indirectly, through the use of job classifications that isolate women in lower paid positions.

It must also be recognised that when women who are working mothers are detrimentally affected by this legislation it is also the children of those women who are affected. This was made clear to me at a community summit I recently hosted in my electorate. Representatives of the childcare industry were scathing of the effect this legislation was having on working mothers in my electorate who felt compelled to work longer hours and to effectively be on call for work at short notice. For working mothers this often means arranging child care at very short notice. Given the irregular hours and the shortage of child care across the country, this is not always possible. The childcare workers who spoke at the forum told how this affects not only the working mothers but also the children.

Working mothers who relied on family day care increasingly felt pressured to work whatever hours their employers demanded, knowing that they had no recourse open to them if they lost their job. Irregular patterns of care meant that their children were increasingly unsettled. One clear example given was of children not knowing who was picking them up from school, as they may have met their carer only that day. How settled is a child expected to be at school if they do not even know who is picking them up afterwards? How settled is a working mother expected to be at work when their child is with a carer they barely know? This is the reality of this government’s Work Choices legislation. Working women make a great contribution to the workforce and to households— (Time expired)

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am certainly pleased to rise in opposition to the motion that the member for Cunningham has put forward to the House today. Like many motions that come from the opposition, the problem is that this is a motion that it is heavy on rhetoric but exceptionally light on fact. We heard that with both the contribution from the member for Cunningham and the contribution we just heard from the member for Calwell. If you look at the specific limbs in the member for Cunningham’s motion, I must say there is only one that I would agree with—that is, the recognition of the contribution Australian women make to workplaces and households across the country. We would universally support that proposition.

But when you delve into the facts of the other propositions in the motion put forward by the Australian Labor Party as being the negative impact of the introduction of the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation, you find that they highlight how absolutely misleading and deceptive the Australian Labor Party is being once again with this motion when it comes to Australian Work Choices legislation. Limb 5 of the motion says that the House:

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

How absolutely absurd for the Australian Labor Party to say that it is actually a recognition that this government is seeking to drive down wages and drive down employment security. Is that really what the Australian Labor Party says this government is trying to do? If that is their proposition, where are the facts to support it? The facts are not there. But I am happy to share facts with the House because, unlike the rhetoric we have heard from the Australian Labor Party, I would like to detail some specifics to the House so that an informed choice can be made about the actual impact of the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation.

Since March 1996, we have seen the number of women in employment increase by over one million—an increase of some 28.3 per cent—to a record high of 4.6 million women now in employment in Australia. The number of mothers who are joining the labour force has also risen over the last 10 years of the Howard government. Approximately 60 per cent of single female parents and 66 per cent of coupled female parents are now participating in the labour force. As well—and importantly—the gap between men and women’s wages has closed under the coalition; so, despite rhetoric from the Australian Labor Party that the gap is widening, it is not true. The fact is that under the coalition government, between February 1996 and May 2006 female earnings as a percentage of male earnings increased from 87.1 per cent to 89.8 per cent. I would certainly support the notion that it is still not at 100 per cent—and it should be—notwithstanding that, the fact is that women’s wages under the coalition are more closely aligned to men’s wages than they ever were under the Australian Labor Party.

Let us move on to the direct impact of Work Choices since it was introduced on 27 March 2006. We see that the participation of women in the labour force has risen significantly. The female participation rate stood at a record high of 57.9 per cent in September 2006—up by a full one per cent, from 56.9 per cent recorded in March 2006. So it has gone from a record high to reach a new record high under the Work Choices legislation. What is more, the number of women in unemployment has declined under the coalition government, since the introduction of Work Choices, by some 3,200 since March. Female unemployment now, I am pleased to advise the House, has fallen by 0.2 of a per cent to equal a 30-year low of 4.8 per cent under this government. So when the opposition says that this government is about driving down working conditions and reducing the number of women in the Australian labour force, the facts show a very different story.

More importantly, we note that the member for Calwell made comments that said that women’s rights needed to be entrenched in legislation and that unless that was done women were vulnerable to exploitation. What kind of exploitation, one would wonder—perhaps the kind of exploitation that existed under the Australian Labor Party when one million working Australians were thrown on the unemployment scrapheap. Is that the kind of protection that the Australian Labor Party would offer up as providing protection to Australian women? We did not see any protection afforded to Australian women when the economy was at record lows. (Time expired)

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Resources, Forestry and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to join my colleagues the members for Cunningham and Calwell in highlighting the damaging impact of the federal government’s Work Choices legislation on Australian working women. I also note media reports today that a new study has found that the number of women directors on the boards of the largest 200 companies has doubled over the last five years. However, still only 11 per cent of independent positions are held by women and almost half of the top boards do not have a single woman director. Obviously, the glass ceiling remains a reality for Australian women, but fortunately progress is being made.

I want to talk about the other women today—the women at the bottom end: the cleaners, the childcare workers, the factory workers and the hospitality workers, who struggle from week to week to make ends meet. The Work Choices bill, particularly in conjunction with the Welfare to Work changes, represents a wholesale change to the way Australian workplaces operate and as a consequence will have major implications for the Australian community over time. Wide and thorough ongoing research continues to demonstrate that women employees are disadvantaged in the labour market. They lag behind men in regard to pay. Earning less than their male counterparts is obviously the order of the day—not just for full-timers but also for part-timers. They are also on the receiving end of the highly casual nature of the Australian workforce, which is also a global trend that has got worse over the last decade. In Canada, for example, full-time working women earn 71 per cent of male wages, while here in Australia the situation is a little better—they earn 85 per cent of male wages. The fact that women receive lower wages highlights their vulnerability in the workplace in negotiating working conditions such as pay, job security, family leave, flexi-time, training, superannuation and associated issues.

The government tells us that Work Choices is intended to create a more flexible and competitive workplace, but I believe this is code for doing women over in the workplace because they start on the back foot in the first instance, anyhow. As shadow minister for the portfolios of resources and tourism, I understand well the important contribution women make to employment in both these key industries. The resources sector—mining, in particular—is no longer the workplace, or the realm, of the Aussie bloke, but because of the skills crisis and the lack of training by the Australian government, more and more women are donning a hard hat and getting out there, and helping to support the burgeoning boom and doing a great job.

Women have also achieved enormous success in the Australian tourism industry. I also note, appropriately, that Australia’s tourism ministerial council is dominated by women and almost half the employment base of the tourism industry is women. Given this, the government should not be introducing legislation that further enhances their vulnerability—and that is what this debate is about. Women will be worse off in difficult economic times when they experience the problems that confront workers generally. The government should, conversely, be actively working to protect the employment rights of women in the workforce and creating an environment that is attractive to women who are considering re-entering employment. At a time when Australia is facing a chronic skills shortage, this makes skills sense and it also makes commonsense.

However, in many ways the new Work Choices legislation continues a shift that commenced under the Howard government in the late 1990s from one of external regulation of employment regulations to internal regulation. This informalisation of the workplace creates the possibility of a lack of formality and transparency surrounding workplace relations and shifts the process of employment relations to the private sphere, where there is little or no public scrutiny of issues or agreements, or an independent umpire to support those in the workforce who have little resources—that is, those with little power. Essentially, the new legislation translates to mean that the position of those already disadvantaged in the labour force—the facts speak for themselves—namely, women and young people, will be made all the more tenuous. Ultimately this will undermine overall productivity by preventing an important segment of the workforce from entering it and also from developing new skills, as women will be in a weaker position to negotiate training, not just wages and conditions of employment.

The motion before the House in the name of the member for Cunningham, and seconded by the member for Calwell, correctly brings to the attention of the Australian community the potential impact of the Work Choices legislation on hardworking Australian women. It will reduce their conditions of employment over time and also lead to a loss of job security. The real change in workforce participation commenced under the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of the 1980s and 1990s— (Time expired)

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had a good laugh over the weekend, as I saw that the Leader of the Opposition was out there trying to paint the Australian Labor Party as the ‘future party’. Over the last 10 years we have seen absolutely nothing from this opposition, apart from a Labor Party that has consistently taken an entrenched position against any form of change. The motion before the House today is a symptom of a Labor Party that is unable to come to grips with the changing face of modern Australia. We are no longer a society with an ‘us and them’ mentality of boss versus worker. The average experience of an Australian in the workplace now shows that their employer is not out to force their conditions down, is not out to reduce their wages and is not out to sack them for no apparent reason. On the contrary—the experience of the average worker is that, if they work hard, they will be rewarded and valued by their employer This is now the reality in Australian workplaces .You can sit down with your employer and you can utilise the flexibility offered by Work Choices to come to new arrangements that are mutually beneficial to both yourself and your employer. This flexibility is most important for Australians with young families, particularly women. Yet the ALP would have you believe through this motion that what women really want is to turn back the clock to recreate the more rigid system that made it illegal to negotiate basic flexibilities between employer and employee. Surely the challenge of work/family balance is not going to be enhanced by turning the clock back to a more rigid system. Surely it is greater flexibility that will help Australians manage that balance more productively.

Work Choices is a continuation of the Howard government’s proud record on women and work. By any measure, women have prospered in the workforce since 1996. The number of women in the workforce has reached a record high. There are now over one million more women in the workforce than there were 10 years ago, which is a massive 28 per cent increase. Women have achieved higher wages and, very importantly, as the member for Moncrieff has outlined, the gap between men’s and women’s wages has closed. The number of mothers joining the labour force has also risen in the last 10 years. Approximately 60 per cent of single female parents and 66 per cent of coupled female parents are now participating in the labour force.

Work Choices continues the creation of a system that enhances the prospects of women in the workforce. ABS labour force data tell us that, in the eight months since Work Choices was introduced, women’s participation in the labour force has risen significantly. The female participation rate stood at a record high of almost 58 per cent in September 2006. Female unemployment has fallen to a 30-year low of 4.8 per cent. The number of women in employment has risen by 117,000. Both part-time and full-time employment for women have reached record highs.

The increased participation of women, particularly those with caring responsibilities, is supported by the range of flexible working arrangements that are now on offer in the workplace. Working mothers in particular are taking advantage of these new flexible and family friendly working arrangements that have been made available to them. The government’s workplace relations reforms make it much easier to negotiate family friendly workplace agreements that meet the needs of individual employees. A good example is Comrec, a small business in Adelaide that employs 22 people, 16 of whom are women. It has reported that, by introducing AWAs, it has been able to negotiate conditions for individual staff that help them with work/family balance, and this helps Comrec by enabling it to retain its skilled workforce in an extremely tight labour market.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.