The howls of protest from the predictable quarters began almost immediately.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry screeched: no one will hire women anymore!
The Council of Small Business of Australia complained: we will drown in a sea of paperwork!
Conservative commentator Rowan Dean, speaking on Sky News Live, dismissed: the union movement is grasping for relevancy in a world where they are irrelevant!
The cause of this outrage is the simple idea – put forward by the ACTU to the Fair Work Commission – that employers should have to justify their reasons for refusing a new parent’s request for flexible working arrangements.
To listen to the business groups you’d think they’d been asked to do something outrageous. Instead, they are being asked to do something outrageously fair.
Let us be perfectly clear: Australian workers covered by an award already have the right to request flexible working arrangements after returning from parental leave, thanks to the Gillard government.
What Australian workers still lack is any requirement on their employers to negotiate flexible working arrangements – including part-time work – in good faith. Today, an employer can dismiss such a request for no reason.
“What we’re asking is [that] the employer can’t categorically reject an employee’s reasonable request,” said ACTU president Ged Kearney. “It’s turning the premise on its head. Instead of the employee having to beg, [the] employer will have to show cause why [they] can’t accommodate it.”
Under the ACTU’s proposal, an employer could reasonably refuse the request on substantial business grounds.
So this is where we find ourselves as a nation: everyone – including the Liberal prime minister and treasurer – agreeing that we need more flexibility in the workplace but as soon as an idea comes along that might make flexibility an actual option, many revert to their left/right, worker/employer battlelines and little mature discussion occurs.
Well, not quite everyone. Employment minister Eric Abetz resisted the urge to comment, saying that he was confident the Fair Work Commission would come to an “appropriate landing” after hearing from the trade union movement and employers.
Despite the fact that Abetz has recently been outed as the workers’ friend in the Abbott cabinet, I’m resisting the urge to take comfort in his restraint.
A wounded, limping Abbott government cannot politically afford to open up another front on workplace relations as it battles to stay alive. Silence and a referral to the Productivity Commission is the best the government can do.
I congratulate the ACTU for taking a leadership role in the debate on how to best promote workplace flexibility and to support working parents, particularly mothers, in balancing work and family obligations. Given the debacle of Abbott’s PPL, the timidity of the Coalition on industrial relations, and the vagueness of Abbott’s intentions on childcare reform, someone needs to grasp the nettle and get some tangible and achievable ideas on the table.
The benefits are too great to miss: according to Joe Hockey just last week, if Australia can increase our female workforce participation to the same level as that of Canada, the Australian economy would be $25bn a year larger.
Let’s not be swayed by the alarmist calls from business that the ACTU’s recommendation for greater workforce flexibility would signal the end times for our economy. Chicken Little calls that the sky will fall in if workers attain rights and protections have accompanied nearly every gain the labour movement has won for Australian workers: a 38-hour work week, annual leave, sick leave, maternity leave, equal pay, universal superannuation, redundancy payments and occupational health and safety. The Australian economy has not suffered as a result.
According to Austrade Australia is entering its 24th year of uninterrupted economic growth, is supported by high productivity levels, with 16 out of 20 industries rating above the global average, and is home to the world’s third largest pool of funds under management.
Australia was also one of the few nations on earth to come through the global financial crisis without going into recession and to come out of it with world-leading GDP growth.
Rowan Dean’s dismissal of the union movement as irrelevant couldn’t be more wrong. Our nation’s economic strength and high standards of living are a consequence of many things, to be sure, but it is near impossible to overestimate the contribution of the Australian union movement and its advocacy for working people in creating the economic benefits and workplace rights we enjoy today.
The ACTU proved this point again in its submission to Fair Work Australia. If we want flexibility in our workplaces, it’s time to get real on how we are going to make it happen.
