Women and Work: Pleasure, Pain, Prospects EASS Divisional research day, 12 th August

1. Women and Work: Pleasure, Pain, Prospects EASS Divisional research day, 12th August Centre for Work and Life, University of South Australia

2. Pleasure, pain, prospects • The pleasures of work…. • The pain • Time • Money • Inequality • Security • Future prospects

3. Work: the pleasures • 60 per cent of Australians would work even if they didn’t need the money • Not just professionals • Over half of cleaners and labourers • Some women ‘love’ their work • Even when they didn’t expect to • Children see the positive spillover • They might love work, but they don’t always love its terms: safety, security, hours

4. The pleasures • Increasing appetite for work? • Women want to work • Young women expect to work • Few signs of the ‘new wife’ that US researchers speak of • With a decade at work before having children, social supports and friendships increasingly work-based • The suburban social desert?

5. Participation

6. But overload and guilt not uncommon • In 1997 Australian women did twice as much housework as men (33 hours, compared to 17) • And very little change between 1992 and 1997 except that women did a bit less and bought more help.

7. How to draw men into housework?

8. The Pain? • Increasing hours for full-timers. • Traveling time is increasing. • The intensity of work is increasing. • Common family time is being squeezed or lost. • Most new jobs have been part-time: the work/family mechanism of choice in Australia. • But it has unique characteristics: • two-thirds is casual with restricted rights, tenure, respect, predictability of earnings and hours, retirement savings, and limited job security.

9. Time: A critical issue for women

10. Unsocial time and families • 64% of Australian employees already work either sometimes or regularly outside standard times • ‘Consistent body of international evidence’ finds that unsocial work time affects social and family time (Strazdins et al, 2004) • Evening and night work is especially stressful for parents, increasing depression, affecting sleep and reducing parental responsiveness to children • Positive associations between shift work and marital discord and divorce

11. Unsocial hours and care • All kinds of unsocial routines (weekend, afternoon, evening and night) can disrupt families and reduce parent-child time • Such parents spend less time reading, playing and helping children and are less satisfied with the time available with children • Many parents compensate by taking less time for themselves

12. New research: effects on children • Analysis of Canadian data by Strazdins et al (2004) shows that children of parents who work non-standard hours are more likely to have emotional or behavioural difficulties • Independent of socio-economic status and childcare use • Other kinds of disadvantage can compound this effect

13. Money • Widening dispersion in earnings • Average full-time gender pay gap steady • But much movement underneath the average • By type of instrument • By industry and occupation • And especially for part-timers • The legacy of undervaluation of feminised jobs… • The political economy of care and service sector work • The pay price for maternity - overshadows the hourly gender pay gap?

14. Inequality • Widening inequality between the top and the bottom of the labour market • Australia, 1989-90 executives earned 18 times of average workers, and by 2005, 63 times. • The social costs of inequality are not visited only on the bottom… • A rising plane of prosperity built upon a growing body of low paid feminised services sector work…?

15. Consider Rosa and Mr Moss • Mr Moss, head of Macquarie Bank is being paid $21.2 million for this years work • Rosa is a room attendant in a luxury Sydney hotel and a sole parent with 5 children, renting • She works 2 days a week for $14 an hour as a room attendant and another 16 hours a week in a shop for $10/hour. Her annual wage is $20,000 and she gets another $10,000 from government. A 90 minute daily commute. • Taxpayer subsidy of low paying employers

16. Security • Over a quarter of employees now formally casual • Disproportionately women • Variable levels of actual insecurity • The price of being part-time • But loss of key conditions like paid holidays and sick leave • Implications for retirement incomes and economic security over the life cycle

17. Prospects?WorkChoices: a weaker safety net minimum pay rate 4 weeks annual leave - with option to sell half 10 days personal/carer’s leave 12 months unpaid parental leave 38 ordinary hours, annual average Australian Workplace Agreements override agreements and awards - without a ‘no disadvantage’ test

18. The measures: Tilts bargaining • ‘Fair pay Commission’ • weak unfair dismissal protections • More anti-collective than US law • Australian Industrial Relations Commission neutered

19. AIRC and work/family • Maternity leave (1979) • Adoption leave (1984) • Parental leave (1990) • Carers’ leave (1994/95) • Right to refuse unreasonable overtime (2001) • Right to request part-time employment (2005) All opposed by coalition and employers How will any new advances be made?

20. Improvements for women? • Loss of key conditions like ‘right to request’ • Pay inequity in an environment of greater decentralisation • Pay equity cases? • Pay/time trades difficult to trace and analyse

21. Overall Impact… • Low paid workers will be lower paid? • $44 lower if government had had its way since 1996 AWAs on ‘take it or leave it’ basis for new employees or on promotion etc • Collective agreements and awards irrelevant over time • Union access to workers more limited and difficult

22. Impact… • Widening wages dispersion • Same workers, different rates • Tougher for the weaker • young people • people returning to work • casuals • working carers • Immigrants • women • Even good bosses are forced to compete on cut price wages and conditions

23. The evidence: AWAs and pay pre-Workchoices • Pay levels and pay rises are lower for private sector workers on AWAs (Peetz 2005) • Even though workers on AWAs, work longer hours • And have less access to penalty rates for unsocial hours and overtime • AWAs much more likely to reduce or abolish pay for working overtime, nights or weekends

24. AWAs and pay • women on AWAs paid 11% less than women on collective agreements in May 2004 • Casuals on AWAs lower by 15%, • Permanent part-timers by 25%. • These are all groups with disproportionate responsibilities for families

25. ‘WorkChoices’ • Whatever else it might do… • Is already lowering standards • 16% of survey of 250/6263 individual contracts since March 2006 removed penalty rates, overtime rates, holiday loading, shift loadings • Two-thirds lost leave loadings, penalty rates and over half shift loadings • Important implications for low paid workers who depend on these payments to make a living wage

26. Future research? • Treasurer aspires to be a woman-friendly government • A key element: fair pay and family friendly conditions • Pressing need for national research • Robust, peer reviewed • Appropriately sophisticated • Multiple projects at more than one level