Knowing what's good for us
In late July, Australian columnist Judith Sloan — the employing class's Trojan horse amongst women — launched a spirited defence of the clauses in Peter Reith's industrial relations bill that deregulate part-time and casual work. The proposals — to remove award restrictions on the numbers of casual and part-time workers in relation to full-time workers, the minimum and maximum numbers of hours that may be worked and the notice required of employers for shift changes — will benefit women, she said, by removing barriers to the growth of part-time work.
It is no news flash that women are in the work force in greater numbers than ever before and form a large majority of part-time workers. Between 1975 and 1995, the proportion of women in paid work rose from 50% to 60%. Forty-three per cent of women workers are employed part-time, compared to 11% of men, and women make up nearly 75% of all part-time workers. Of these women, 22% would like to work more hours than are available to them.
ANU Professor Helen Hughes and Sloan manage to put very different spins on these figures. Writing in the Australian in March, Hughes argued that the large number of women working part-time leads to the marginalisation of women in the labour market — into particular industries and the lowest rungs of those industries. In contrast, Sloan concludes that women are happy with part-time work, which is good for them and, therefore, that there should be more part-time work opportunities than full-time.
Developing her theme, Sloan says that the unions are the real villains of the part-time work story: "Trade union action, in combination with award restrictions, has skewed the nature of part-time employment towards casual work away from permanent part-time work". Do I hear Reith's voice guiding Sloan's keyboard entries or is it the other way around?
An alternative picture is presented by the Financial Review's Sheryle Bagwell in her July 10 column titled "Employers are having the part-time of their lives". Bagwell points out that "where the union movement has been reluctant, business has been quick to jump on the flexible hours bandwagon, adopting the rhetoric of helping parents to balance their family responsibilities in the process". Some employers' "flexibility" has been heavily skewed in their favour, she states, noting that employers began demanding a greater range of working hours arrangements under enterprise bargaining. This process will be greatly exacerbated by the Liberals' IR bill.
Rather than unions being the prime mischief-makers, as Sloan charges, it is employers who are exploiting the vulnerability of women in the labour market, taking away penalty rates, sociable hours and controls over a regular work schedule. As Bagwell says, women should recognise that there is "good" flexibility and "bad" flexibility, and "not fall for patronising platitudes" about what's good for them.
By Jennifer Thompson