If we are serious as a community about addressing the difficulties faced by working families then we need policies and laws that actively encourage family friendly workplaces.
The laissez-faire attitude of the government based on the ideologically blinkered belief that deregulation is the answer to everything simply isn’t delivering for working families.
Too much of the ‘flexibility’ in the current approach is all one way and many families feel they are being pushed to breaking point.
An active industrial commission could assist to restore the balance.
They should also be required to ensure that awards contain effective and innovative provisions to assist workers to combine work with family responsibilities - including provisions relating to hours of work.
The AIRC should examine proposed agreements and encourage provisions that positively assist work and family balance. Flexible hours provisions that disadvantage workers with family responsibilities should not pass the no disadvantage test.
The access of parents to carer’s leave also need to be improved.
Under current award provisions, employees are entitled to take up to five days of their own sick and/or bereavement leave to care for an immediate family/household member.
The existing regime of personal/carer’s leave needs to be
overhauled.
Improvements that should be considered include:
- Extending eligibility - Casuals are excluded from current
carer’s leave provisions. To address this personal/carer’s leave
could be legislated as a minimum standard of employment to apply to all
employees.
- Review number of days - Current award standard of five days leave is
inadequate to meet many families’ needs especially parents of young
children and sole parents. Need also varies with the age of the child
- Broaden the eligible purpose of leave – Carer’s leave is
only available to care for sick family members. Surveys of time actually taken
confirm just under half the days taken for emergency care are associated with
curriculum days, failure of usual childcare, school holidays, and escorting
children to medical and dental appointments.
- Extended paid leave – Carer’s leave is generally
associated with unexpected emergencies. Families, particularly those of school
aged children, need to access longer periods of leave to accommodate school
holidays. Ad hoc arrangements such as 48/52’s (where 48 weeks pay is
averaged over the full year giving employees eight weeks paid leave) and
discretionary paid family leave need to be made more broadly
available.
Hours of work is also a major issue that requires a contemporary policy response.
Employee surveys consistently identify control over working hours as a high priority and lack of control as a source of stress. Two policy responses should be considered - employee choice rostering and a right to request.
UK legislation will take effect in April 2003 giving employees rights to
request a change in their hours of work in order to care for a child and give
employers a responsibility to consider requests in a timely manner.
Employee choice rostering is under consideration by two Australian state
governments.
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