AWAs – An Acronym for Abolishing Women’s Awards

Remember “Work Choices”? The Government television advertising promised better, more flexible choices, ‘work choices’ for workers and employers.

Well, the statistics are starting to roll in and employers are getting more flexibility and power, as they negotiate Australian Workplace Agreements that erode the privileges, and hard-fought-for and won gains of workers.

The Your Rights at Work Campaign (http://www.rightsatwork.com.au/), researched and funded by the by the ACTU has released these figures:

51% cut overtime loadings
63% cut penalty rates
64% cut annual leave loading
46% cut Public Holiday payment
52% cut shift work loadings
40% cut rest breaks
46% cut incentive based payments and bonuses
48% cut monetary allowances
36% cut declared public holidays
(ACTU:2007)

While these are an appalling array of loses to any workers, the truth is that they are hitting female employees hardest. Women, who form the majority of the casual and/or part-time work force, are, of course, the majority being affected by the introduction of Australian Workplace Agreements.

This is why this post reframes acronym to the more accurate “Abolishing Women’s Awards”. “Work Choices” and AWAs have abolished the concept of “Award Wages” for women who work as casual or part-time workers.

It is not just the ACTU, a somewhat radical voice, proclaiming this dissolution of working conditions. Academia has also been producing similar results from research into “Work Choices” and AWAs. David Peetz, in The Impact on Workers of Australian Workplace Agreements and the Abolition of the ‘No Disadvantage Test’ found that

"For men, the difference between earnings under the two systems was not significant, but women on AWAs had hourly earnings some 11 per cent less than women on registered collective agreements. This is a noteworthy figure considering Minister Andrews’ earlier claim that women earned nearly a third more on AWAs than on collective agreements. The gender pay gap was worse on AWAs: where as women on registered collective agreements 90 per cent of the hourly pay of men on such agreements, women on AWAs received only of the hourly pay of men on AWAs." (p.11)

Clearly women are either being exploited in the bargaining process or are simply not as experienced and “hard-nosed” at staring bosses in the face and rejecting offers that undermine their pay conditions and economic viability in the workforce – not to mention the fact that the Australian Government undervalues the economic contribution women make to themselves, children, households and the economy.

Or there could be a reason which is being overlooked because it is hidden under cloaks of patriarchal economic values, such as “male bread winner” and the fact that the income of women in relationships is seen as ‘secondary’. This, of course, is not true as a mortgage or rental payments plus lifestyle can no longer be achieved or sustained on a single income.

This blatantly obvious economic fact doesn’t seem to have reached the majority of the male-psyche, although more men are awakening to the economic reality. However, the necessity for women to work, and earn “equal money for equal work” seems to have completely slipped from the economic reality radar of the Howard Government. Perhaps John and Janette should mingle in suburbia and see the impact of declining wages, rises in the cost of housing and childcare and the increasing percentage of weekly earnings spent of commuting costs or petrol.

Now that would make for highly rating reality TV.

Yet, the Australian Government seems determined to ignore the real cost, in negative terms, to workers and, particularly, women. It would seem that Government Ministers and their advisors are no longer reading the newspapers either, as Meaghan Shaw wrote, in the Sydney Morning Herald, on 14 February 2007 that “[t]he impact was particularly harsh for women, whose real ordinary-time earnings fell by 2 per cent in the first six months” after the introduction of “Work Choices” and AWAs. This is just one example of the negative cover received by AWAs and the impact they have on women, yet the Australian Government have stubbornly refused to act to redress the ways in which “Work Choices” actively discriminates against women.

The cynic in me wonders why, as we approach International Women’s Day on 8 March with the theme, at least in Queensland, of “Looking After Yourself at Work”, the Howard Government is actively (further) disenfranchising 53 percent of the population who are women and who vote?


References:

ACTU, “Your Rights At Work” http://www.rightsatwork.com.au/ (Accessed: 5 March 2007)

Peetz, D. (2007) The Impact on Workers of Australian Workplace Agreements and the Abolition of the ‘No Disadvantage Test’ www.econ.usyd.edu.au/download.php?id=4301 (Accessed: 5 March 2007)

Shaw, M. (2007) “Women are hardest hit by workplace laws”, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February 2007.