AEU Conference: work and care
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 128 No 4, 9 June 2023, page no.28
Each year, the AEU Federal Conference provides delegates with the opportunity to discuss the different issues currently facing the education profession in Australia.
This year the conference heard from the following keynote speakers:
- Senator Barbara Pocock (Australian Greens Spokesperson for Finance, Employment and the Public Sector and Chair of the Select Committee on Work and Care)
- QTU President Cresta Richardson.
Work and care: Senator Barbara Pocock
Most Australians over their life course will take on the role of carer. Women are disproportionately impacted by this. Additionally, there is a significant impact on immigrant workers on visas that limit work hours. As educators, we are aware that some children also carry the role of carer while still at school.
A living income is no longer a guarantee for Australians. It was based on a man’s right to feed his horse and have a house to live in. Now the worker has a foal (i.e., a child) that they must provide for, feed and house, so the original standard for a living income needs to change.
The work and care system in Australia is no longer fit for purpose. We have the right to work, but the current system does not involve a social contract that also guarantees the right to care.
Part-time work options that allow for caring duties should NOT result in job insecurity. The system needs to allow transitions between work and care roles. A report from the Select committee went to Parliament on 9 March. The following are the key considerations of the report:
- Government needs to take a holistic look at work and care roles faced by so many.
- There is a need to recognise the value of unpaid caring work.
- Early childhood education needs improvement.
- How we pay working carers in Australia.
- We should achieve a world standard for paid parental leave.
- Every Australian who works should be eligible for sick leave.
- Predictable and secure working times.
- Embedding the right to disconnect.
Work and care: QTU President Cresta Richardson
Australia’s institutions and culture retain two patriarchal assumptions regarding work and care: first, that the ideal worker is a male breadwinner with minimal care and cultural obligations and that women’s work is worth less than men’s work; second, that the ideal carer is expected to be a woman, and that this is an unpaid private responsibility.
The Senate Inquiry on Work and Care provides us as an education movement with a unique opportunity. Together we must urge our respective state and territory governments to acknowledge and address Australia’s deeply gendered cultural and institutional assumptions of work and care.
AEU members in all sectors of public education experience various, significant work and care crises. These crises particularly affect women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators, who are structurally disadvantaged by outdated yet broad social norms and industrial laws that operate on the false premise that a typical worker is a male breadwinner with minimal care and cultural obligations.
Australia-wide teacher and education support personnel shortages are driven by government decisions and omissions that cap educators’ wages, increase workloads and hours of work, fail to provide secure employment, and fail to properly fund public education. These shortages only amplify the workloads of and health and safety risks to the remaining public sector education workforce.
Additional action to improve the pay and conditions of public educators is urgently needed. This can be achieved by removing state and territory governments’ pay caps and pay freeze policies, action to decrease insecure work, and providing secure employment offers and conversion options to educators, particularly to new teachers, and to the TAFE teaching workforce.