Weighing up Australian values

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.