Peak groups agree on maternity leave
Peak groups agree on maternity leave
HREOC Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, ACTU President Sharan Burrow and Australian Industry Group Chief Executive Heather Ridout have joined forces to call for a national, taxpayer-funded paid maternity leave scheme for all Australian women.
HREOC Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, ACTU President Sharan Burrow and Australian Industry Group Chief Executive Heather Ridout have joined forces to call for a national, taxpayer-funded paid maternity leave scheme for all Australian women.
"In an extremely tight labour market Australia's continuing economic prosperity depends on encouraging more women back into the paid workforce after they've had children," said Sharan Burrow, President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
"At the moment, Australia has one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the OECD for women aged 25 to 44 - part of the problem is a lack of paid maternity leave and other measures to support primary carers."
Ms Burrow says employers offering paid maternity leave estimate up to 90 per cent of female employees return to their job, avoiding the cost of replacing lost staff.
Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick says the coming together of the three influential organisations is a watershed moment in the long campaign for Australia to catch up with the international community on paid maternity leave.
"Two-thirds of Australian women have no access to paid maternity leave. HREOC has long recommended a national government-funded 14 week paid maternity leave scheme as a basic minimum standard for Australian women," she said.
"It is important that small and medium sized business not be adversely impacted by the cost or administrative burden of any scheme and proposals must not act as a disincentive to the employment of women.
"We share this commitment to Australian women - paid maternity leave must become a reality, and we will work together to assist the Productivity Commission to develop a well-considered, well-modelled system of paid leave."
Australian Industry Group Chief Executive Heather Ridout said the Ai Group supports an appropriate period of publicly funded paid maternity leave consistent with community and international standards and at the level of the federal minimum wage.
"There is no doubt that a national maternity leave scheme would deliver tangible benefits to business, employees and to the broader economy and society and, of course, for the children themselves," she said.
"In addition, such a scheme would help keep women linked to the workforce and demonstrate formal recognition of the opportunity costs facing women in terms of lost income and interrupted careers when they choose to have children. It would also demonstrate that the dual roles of working women as mothers and employees is recognised and valued."
The ACTU, AIG and HREOC will be making individual submissions to the Productivity Commission, currently examining the merits of a national scheme on behalf of the federal government. A joint opinion piece by all three organisations on paid maternity leave appears today in The Age newspaper.