Weighing up Australian values

The book Weighing Up Australian Values; Balancing Transitions and Risks to Work and Family in Modern Australia is a social policy response to the period of ongoing social and economic change in Australia over the last 30 years driven in part by the revolution in information and communications technology.

The transformation in the structure of the Australian economy from a concentration on domestic markets to a greater emphasis on exporting goods and services has resulted in changes in the workplace that influence the outlook most Australians now have for their working lives.

A more open economy carries with it a greater sense of risk and the demand for increased competitiveness, greater efficiency, higher productivity, more emphasis on brainpower than muscle power and an increased preference for workers able to meet these demands. These changes in the economy alone will place increased pressure on governments to do more to strengthen systems of social protection.

In parallel with these changes there has also occurred a profound shift in the relationships between men and women, driven largely by the much higher participation of women in the paid workforce, reflecting the shift towards an information and service economy eager to employ more women. It also reflects an ongoing demand by women to realise a greater degree of gender equality at home and at work.

Together these changes have made obsolete the dominant post war model of “full employment” based on permanent full time jobs paying a living wage for male breadwinners supporting stable nuclear families. This model assumed that women would mostly only participate in full time paid work prior to partnering and only resume full time paid work when children were no longer dependent.

This standardised pattern of employment has been replaced today by much greater variation in working hours with only half of those employed in full time permanent jobs. The balance of those employed is either on permanent part time or casual contracts or in various forms of fixed term employment. While women are over represented in part time paid work, increasing numbers of women have full time jobs including those with preschool children.

For both men and women there is enormous variation in the conditions of work placing great pressure on parents seeking to balance work and caring responsibilities. The changing character of work places has meant greater demand for the acquisitions of education and skills, delaying workplace entry for the young and resulting in older workers being phased out of the workforce earlier, despite people living longer.

There is also much greater weight being placed on individual productivity with the result that younger people not completing secondary education may be marginalised early, while interruption in paid working life as a result of accident or illness or increased caring responsibilities may have longer term financial and social consequences. These changes introduce a stronger sense of risk and uncertainty into relationships at home and at work.

My concern in writing this book was that Australian governments had not anticipated the social policy implications of such profound changes. The traditional social policy model had assumed a sharp distinction between the roles of men and women, between paid work and the domestic sphere, between work and education.

It was underpinned by assumptions such as the subordination of employees to employers and the dependence of women on male partners. Economic and social change exposed the need to renegotiate an acceptable balance of individual rights and obligations in both places.

The obligation accepted by most employers to offer longer-term security in return for workers accepting the employer’s authority no longer form the basis of work contracts. Today’s emphasis on individual work contracts is based on the interest of employers as opposed to values reflecting a sense of reciprocal social responsibility.

At home the desire on the part of women for a greater degree of gender equity often results in an ongoing conflict as to roles and responsibilities.

These changes at home and work bring with them the risk that people may not be able to manage the sense of greater individual responsibility or agency now integral to modern life.

It is against this background that this book explores the potential for Australian social policy of the German labour market expert Gunther Schmid’s work on “transitional labour markets”. Schmid recognises the risks involved in the unresolved nature of relationships in modern society flowing from the disruption in traditional understandings of roles and responsibilities but argues that it is for the most part possible to anticipate these risks and to work with people to help manage them.

Schmid accepts as fact that modern society is inevitably a risk society. However, he thinks it important not to jettison the concept of “full employment” but rather to redefine it within the framework of the current flexible organisation of work that allows a more equal distribution of paid and unpaid working time between men and women.

Fundamental to this idea is the concept of equality between men and women allowing men and women to share paid work equally during a lifetime. “Transitional Labour Markets” is Schmid’s term for the institutional arrangements (which he terms bridges ) that will need to be introduced to enable people to cope with the frequent changes and transitions now common across the life course.

Considerable emphasis has been given in Australian social policy to demanding that people adapt to the market. However, it is also important that markets respond to people and the realities of modern life. Inevitably a very different economy and a very different society will require new institutional arrangements.

Associated with the traditional model of full employment (full time permanent jobs for most male employees) was provision for a relatively austere safety net. However in labour markets where perhaps only half all of all employees occupy secure permanent full time jobs, governments have found that increasing numbers are drawing at least part of their income from publicly funded social security payments.

There is also more movement of people in and out of jobs, for example from part time or fixed term jobs into more permanent work, seeking to combine work and education or looking for opportunities to undertake education or training full time. There is now more recognition of the costs and benefits of full time and unpaid caring work previously thought of as being outside of the formal economy and of no financial value. These changes in the nature of work and living all have profound implications for public policy.

A stronger commitment by parents to sharing caring responsibilities will require flexibility in working time not only around the birth of a child but also at different development stages of the child’s life. These arrangements need to have a sense of rights and or entitlement so that people know the circumstances under which they can vary their working hours without jeopardising their position in the firm.

This requires negotiation on the part of both employers and employees of certain rules, standards or norms governing absences from the workplace - especially important for women who still do most family caring work and whose paid jobs tend to be concentrated in the retail and hospitality industries, often without union protection and with only minimal job security and award conditions.

In an information economy there is the constant danger that the skills which provided security for workers in the old economy will not now prove to be sustainable. With less commitment to permanent employment the onus falls on individuals to ensure they maintain knowledge and skills crucial to remaining in the workforce. Unfortunately those with minimal education and training are the least likely to be able to access education and training programs supported by employers.

The tendency is for the most intensive programs to be funded on a user pays basis underlying an urgent need to invest in education and training not only because that will help maintain a clever country but also because the most important characteristic shared by those most marginal to the workforce is their poorer education and skills compared with those in work.

It is especially difficult for those balancing work and family responsibilities to keep up with other workers in improving education and skills. Part time and especially casual workers, mostly women, are least likely to receive any education and training at work paid for by employers.

There is now enormous pressure on time with average hours of work tending to increase. People in a sense lose control of managing time often resulting in great pressures on marriages and families. I argue that public policy needs to give much more consideration to the distribution of time across the life course and develop ways of assisting people to plan their time more effectively.

This is made very difficult in Australia as unlike most other developed countries we have little paid parental leave in the private sector and little sense of the need to create opportunities for people to vary the hours they spend in paid work. This issue is receiving much greater attention in Europe should be given more consideration in Australia, which has one of the highest rates of part time and casual work in the OECD.

The current emphasis on flexibility and mobility, on seeking to balance work, education, caring and civic responsibilities, can be applauded and many have embraced these opportunities enthusiastically. On the other hand, the demand for flexibility does not take into account the needs of people with disabilities or those caring for them. There is also a need to recognise family caring responsibilities not only for younger children but also for ageing parents where there is an increasing emphasis on the responsibility of individuals and less emphasis on the responsibilities of society.

Günter Schmid argues that in a more market driven and risk orientated society we will need to take seriously the ethical question as to where the balance between individual and social responsibility lies. Indeed this book argues that in the end issues of work life balance in contemporary Australian society are indeed ethical issues and points to the urgent need for new policy directions developed in the context of Weighing Up Australian Values.