Apparently paying somebody to not work for you while you pay somebody alse to do that person's job makes you competitive in business.
The "expert" quoted here is a representative of
The Work Foundation the sponsors of which include
Rolls Royce
Microsoft
South East England Development Agency(SEEDA)
PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Merck, Sharp and Dohme
Department for Trade and Industry
Department of Culture, Media and Sport
Department for Education and Skills
EDF Energy
BBC
Australian women get bad work deal: expert
Leon Gettler
November 6, 2006
THE Howard Government's refusal to implement a universal paid maternity leave scheme leaves the Australian economy uncompetitive, according to an international work trends expert.
Stephen Bevan, director of research for British-based research group The Work Foundation, said the lack of regulatory support for women in the workforce has put Australia at a disadvantage.
He also warned that deregulating the labour market was unlikely to improve the economy. Indeed, it might make things worse.
"The thing that shocked me most since I have been here is the apparent lack of a constructive regulatory framework that supports women in the workplace," Mr Bevan said.
"What's needed is positive encouragement for paid maternity leave, making it easier to return part-time, and flexibility. But there are implicit barriers to that here, both in the way the law is framed and in some employers' practices."
It's needed, he said, because of demographics. Pure and simple.
"In the UK, by the end of the decade only one in five workers will be a white able-bodied man under 45 in full-time employment … one in five workers will be a mother.
"That's a fundamental shift in the shape of the workforce.
"If employers here think they need what I call pale, male and stale employees, they're going to be disappointed. Fifty per cent of your graduates are women, so you have a huge talent pool.
"They are not just functionaries, they are extremely gifted and talented people who are committed to doing work and you seem to have some sort of structural impediment to giving them a chance in the workplace.
Dont you just love this. "Pale and stale" men while women are "extremely gifted and talented people who are committed to doing work". GWA
"And given that you want to compete in the knowledge economy like everyone else does, you have got one hand tied behind your back."
The problem, he says, is not just with the employers and government. Some trade unions are just as much to blame.
"Some of the trade unions are perpetuating those things in their view around non-conventional working patterns," he said. "A job for some of them is that it must be full-time, permanent, continuous and non-interrupted."
It certainly helps business if it's people are continuous and non-interrupted. GWA
Still, trade unions globally have other problems. The shift away from manufacturing to services, changes in demographics and workforce orientation meant that the union movement had to redefine itself, he said.
"The fundamental issue for trade unions is whether they want to carry on fighting the class war or whether they want to fundamentally change the nature of their role," he said.
"It's like product diversification if you're a company and the market is shifting. You either stick your head in the sand and say, 'all we have to do is organise better', which is what some of the traditional unions say, or you change.
"The nature of their market, the nature of their membership is fundamentally shifting, and the traditional sources of membership are drying up.
"The number of men over 55 in the workforce has dramatically declined. They are not attracting women into trade union membership, apart from the public sector, and they are not attracting young people.
"Most people who think about this see that their future lies in being almost like employment agencies, offering their members a range of different services, rather than being an insurance policy against poor working conditions and job loss, which is obviously part of their role. It means being more imaginative and working in partnership with employers to help people develop their careers."
But is that utopian vision possible when unions and employers seem to be coming from two different directions, and when they represent two very different constituencies?
If trade unions become like service organisations working in partnership with employers, would that undermine their role protecting their industrially weak? Not necessarily, he said.
"There are plenty of examples now where some professional and technical workers have embraced partnership work wholeheartedly and actually accept that capitalism does exist. They accept that part of their job is to make sure it's good capitalism, and what they are doing is collaborating with employers.
"They recognise that the profit motive is a legitimate one and that there are different ways of achieving profit."
He cited USDAW (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) in Britain, which had negotiated an agreement with retailer Tesco and was now talking to Tesco about lifelong learning, career development and gender equality. Still, the move to deregulate the labour market in Australia and undermine unions would not necessarily produce a more vibrant economy, he said. It might even be the reverse.
Scandinavian countries had much better figures on employment and productivity than Britain, which has the second least regulated labour market in the OECD. And despite soaring unemployment and economic problems, France and Germany had superior productivity levels.
"The evidence on labour market flexibility just isn't clear-cut at all," he said.
To summarise what this goat wants us to think is that women are better than "stale, pale" men. He claims that expanded maternity leave provisions will somehow magically, and in denial of common sense, improve business competitiveness but carefully neglects to tell us how.