‘Community unionism’ is the key.

Women and the IR changes

Justine Evesson's notes from the front line.

Philosophical undercurrents

• Neo-liberal economics and a deregulated labour market
              - Men will always do better than women under these conditions

• Social and moral conservatism
              - Women are homemakers
              - Men are breadwinners

• This is not our world or our labour market

• These philosophical currents operating separately, together or at cross-purpose deepen inequality - especially for women

IR changes worst for women

• More women will be low paid
            - Women already over represented in low paid sector in Australia - 18 per cent women, 12 per cent of men
            - Glimpse into our future

• UK low paid - 31 per cent of women, 13 per cent of men
• USA low paid - 33 per cent of women, 20 per cent of men

• Women will have lower pay
            - Bottom will fall out of minimum wage
            - Lose penalty rates, overtime, allowances

• more women are casual, work weekends, and rely on these rates in take home pay eg retail NZ
    - Women will go on AWAs

• 1 in 4 women currently on awards
• eg Pharmacy Guild already have a template AWA
    - Gender gap under AWAs is 20 per cent, awards 0 per cent
    - Low paid workers are not upwardly mobile

• Women will have less control over hours
            - Hours flexibility employers
            - For employees further fracturing and loss of certainty
            - AWA research shows hours and pay are focal point of employer concentration
            - Hours critical to make work and family/life balance

• Women will have fewer entitlements
            - Paid maternity leave will go further into management discretion
            - No sign of paid paternity leave

• Women will have even less job security
            - High numbers of casual and part time workers
            - Move in and out of the labour market to have children
            - Churn in the low wage sector
            - Unfair dismissal in the low wage sector
            - State contractor deeming provisions under threat - cleaners and outworkers

• Heavily regulated unions vs. unregulated employers
            - Women fair better under union agreements

Work and family/life balance

• All this adds up to less support to combine work and parenting responsibilities

• Women's choices are further constrained

• Some women may be forced into working low paid, insecure jobs to keep themselves and families out of poverty

• More women will be discouraged from entering or encouraged to leave the labour market due to low wage jobs and tax disincentives and high childcare costs

Women are the solution

• Women are at the front line of disadvantage

• There is no solution to deepening inequality without women

• We need a new gender politic to move forward

So what can be done?

• Lobby state/local governments - for regulation and community funding

• Networks with community orgs to support legal/human rights issues

• Traditional methods of organising can't and don't work alone

• Need new models to organise more broadly at household and community levels for new forms of social solidarity

• Trade unionism growing in countries with 'community unionism'
            - South Africa, Brazil, Korea

Also on the Evatt site:

• Industrial relations: Employee rights and the economy, by Greg Combet
• So much for all that, by Meg Smith
• Seventeen leading researchers assess the government's proposed changes to labour law
• The fight of our lives, by Doug Cameron
• Changing Australia, Carmel Tebbutt, Tom McDonald and Jenny Lawless launch the union story
• Coming soon: workplace survivor, by Warwick McDonald
• One hundred years of arbitration: A novel institution, by Stuart Macintyre

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