Implements certain recommendations of the Australian Human Rights Commission report, Respect@Work. National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces by amending the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 to amend the definition of 'unlawful discrimination'; and extend the period of time between an alleged incident and the lodging of a complaint in relation to the President's discretion to terminate a complaint;
Insecure employment affects women and men in different ways; it is not gender neutral. This submission responds to the Inquiry’s terms of reference through a gender lens. The displacement of secure by insecure work is not due to a single factor such as growth in casual work.
The changes to the Fair Work Act proposed in the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill will affect women and men in different ways because the structure of the workforce is not gender neutral. In the case of the current legislative package, most of the proposed changes actively remove rights and entitlements of women by targeting female dominated sectors.
It is now widely acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting women and men in different ways; it is not gender neutral. The by-products of economic shock and its impact on insecure employment have hit women particularly hard. Women are over-represented in industries most affected by the virus.
The bundle of behaviours called wage theft refers to employer non-compliance with minimum standards in base wages, loadings, overtime or superannuation. While widespread, wage theft is not gender neutral. The behaviour involved most commonly and most significantly affects low paid employees in part-time and casual work—all groups in which women predominate.
The Government has recently issued a Discussion Paper canvassing penalties for wage theft. However, in our view neither the discussion paper nor the proposed remedies came to terms with the extent and implications of non-compliance with legal wage and entitlements requirements. For this reason, we welcome the opportunity offered by this Inquiry to extend the national conversation on wage theft beyond the limited proposals raised in the discussion paper.
The Attorney-General’s discussion paper presents a partial picture of the extent of the problem of wage theft. It recurs to the ‘bad apple’ view of non-compliance among ‘a small number of employers’, which treats wage theft as aberrant and non-systemic. This view ignores available research: as the data in this document indicates, wage theft is endemic to the point of contributing to the national problem of chronic low wage growth (McKenzie, 2018).
Wage theft is endemic in Australia and a contributor to the persistent low wage growth undermining the national economy (McKenzie, 2018). It has a massive direct impact on employees who lose entitlements (on average $10,789 for each affected employee) and costs taxpayers over $600m annually (PwC, 2012, iii).
This submission briefly addresses the gender segregation issues identified in the first three terms of reference. The issues identified in those sections are expanded upon and addressed in detail under the last two terms of reference, which discuss approaches to gender segregation and suggested remedies.
