Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Ensuring our suppliers and business partners operate with high, social
and environmental standards
Providing banking access and services for diverse groups eg. ethnic
minorities, migrants, lower socio-economic groups, the elderly, rural
communities
Giving support to community groups through both time and money eg.
Assisting with financial literacy, sponsorship of causes, volunteering
activity
Complacency
For EEO to revive itself there needs to be new thinking about the issues and
the solutions. A modern public discussion is required about what
responsibilities employers and workers have individually, and together, and
what values they hold. What leadership the public service should provide as a
direct expression of the value of equality is the issue before us today. Some of
the wider questions that New Zealand society must wrestle with that could
help this rethink are:
how do public service employers in a tight labour market attract, retain and
promote diverse workers?
why do people with disabilities still lag so far behind other EEO groups?
and why, after all the publicity given to the subject does the Human Rights
Commission still believe there are still significant racial, sexual harassment
and bullying incidents in some workplaces?
good employer onus, and may even feature as a recommendation from the
pay and employment equity task force that is currently examining health and
education sectors. The ILO predicts a positive duty will be more effective in
tackling the subtlest forms of discrimination, such as occupational
segregation. A positive duty could be customised for the many smaller
enterprises in New Zealand. It shifts the rights-onus forward, not backwards to
the individual complainant.
Current risks in rethinking EEO.
However, I see several risks in debating and driving forward with equality at
work.
First, there is the prevailing EEO cringe factor which could prevent New
Zealand moving off the plateau. The cringe factor comes about when we
timidly and defensively respond to those who clamour that talking or debating
EEO issues is overly politically correct. The anti PC brigade, is undergoing
resurgence. It is currently very fashionable to knock EEO as being too PC
and much harder for supporters of those not on a level playing field to answer
in the current climate. It is not exactly the fabled EEO backlash, more
targeting EEO as either an unnecessary compliance cost or an expression of
political ideology, rather than a fundamental human right.
Ive taken as my example of this, columnist Garth George in the New Zealand
Herald, in an attack on the Minister of Labour Margaret Wilson headlined,
Why socialist strivings for Utopia always come to nought.
Ms Wilsons latest venture into the realm of social engineering is to set up a
group to co-ordinate policies that promote a work-life balance for us all.
And Ill tell you now what will happen. The inter-agency steering group will
attract bureaucrats, health professionals, human Resources wonks,
academics and other self-styled experts like a magnet attracts iron filings.
They will investigate ad nauseum, hold meetings ad infinitum and pocket fat
consulting fees, all of which in the end will cost the taxpayer millions. And
when the research is done and the reports are prepared, even after any
legislation has been passed, absolutely nothing will change.
Because human nature is such that there will always be those who will work
as many hours in a day as they can stay awake, irrespective of the effect that
has on family, because their sole interest in life is money and the property and
prestige it will bring..There is no need for the state to waste money,
time and talents in trying to rectify a perceived imbalance between work and
Life.all the Govt has to do to substantially adjust the work-life balance is
to cut income and other taxes by at least 40 per cent; and to ensure that
every worker is paid a living wage for 40 hours a week.
Journalists, (and I know because for 25 years I was one) by nature of their
craft never practice work-life balance themselves. However, they provide an
echo chamber of discontent about EEO issues. This discontent masquerades
mischievously as the voice of common sense and reason, the average person
on the Island Bay bus.
Second, there is a debate about the visibility of equality. Human resource
management is vulnerable to faddish thinking, largely because it struggles for
its own disciplinary basis as a hybrid of managerialism and organisational
behaviour. For the two years I was Professor of Human Resource
Management at Massey I clung to the life-raft of communication theory to
navigate safely out of these stormy waters.
A current trend is to talk up the notion of EEO as integrated or mainstreamed
or as an ethic or value underpinning all work practices. As an ideal this is
lovely, but it assumes too rosier a picture of organisational life. Many of you
might have caught episodes of the British satire called The Office. Part of its
humour comes from knowing that it is not too dissimilar from the worst of the
reality of some workplaces . It would be neat to think the values of equality
were embedded into practice and culture. Sadly, that is not the case. Unless
equality measures have visible indicators then there will be no progress.
Organisations will not be self reflexive about things they cant see.
There is a need then, not only for new thinking about equality but for
persuasive and thick-skinned champions of EEO, for promotion and
information about relevant issues and experiences and for opportunities in
workplaces to discuss work-related issues as they intersect with equality. Are
there enough champions in the public service who talk up equality and follow
it up with good practice?
3.
1993 Male
$40,000
$51,000
$80,000
2000 Male
$57,000
$77,000
$122,000
1993 Female
$36,000
$46,500
$68,000
2000 Female
$52,500
$66,000
$107,000
from the State Services Commission- the 2003 progress report that focuses
particularly on Mori- the biggest pay gap is in the Managers occupation
category, where Maori women are paid less than Mori men, Mori men are
paid less than non-Mori men and Mori women are paid less than non Mori
women.
Confirming my view that the media reinforce the notion that women are doing
all right, thank-you is the Dominion/Posts poster $2 million woman.
Leaving aside the morality of, and values, attached to telephone number
salaries, there is an exquisite irony here. The Dominion/Post failed to tell
readers that in 1999 when Ms Gattung was first appointed she earned a
million dollars less than her predecessor. A letter published at the time
written by a female correspondent to the Dominion said Ms Gattung,
replacing a male CEO, was considered to be worth only half his salary.
This was, she wrote, strange in a country that has been touting pay equity
for as long as I can remember, if not actually practising it. It has taken her
four years to achieve pay parity. Of course, other women dont necessarily
have Ms Gattungs leverage.
It might seem odd to be talking about access to work issues when New
Zealand has more people in paid employment than at any time in its history at
1.886 million people. But there is one global trend that is incontrovertible in
employment- the need to find, attract and retain the right employees from the
diversity that might present itself. Here are access examples at the
professional level that employers should be concerned about if they want the
best person for the job. In a civilised society like New Zealand why do newlygraduated females earn $11,000 less, at $41,000, than equivalent men at
$52,000, in commerce and business occupations, according to the latest
survey of university graduate destinations published by the New Zealand Vice
Chancellors Committee.
The figures for people with disabilities within the public service are not
encouraging. Of 40 departments, ten have not set a 2010 target figure for
overall representation. Of the 31 departments who responded, more than half,
58% of departments, report little or no progress.
4.
First, we need really up to date information about the changed nature of work,
and a willingness to embrace different workplace attitudes and rules. We
should not be seduced, necessarily, by data that convinces us that everything
in the garden of the knowledge economy is better. We need more about the
socialisation of work and its impacts not just on work/life balance but on new
family structures, communities and society, the work rich and the work poor,
the influence of later motherhood, the immediate and long term effects of
student debt, immigration influences etc. A dynamic research template would
be useful so that our perceived empirical wisdom is not watered down copy
cat version of overseas where the economy and cultures are different. While
the research attention has focussed on the future of work I personally believe
we do not know enough about in the current New Zealand reality.
Second, we need to acknowledge the basics of equality at all points of the
employment cycle-access, on the job and exit. A human rights framework,
based as it is on both individual and collective rights, allows us to consider the
right to work in an individual and modern way.
5.
Older workers
Could I ask you to write down what percentage of workers aged 50 and over
make up the staff complement of your organisation. If you dont know, take a
guess. My research shows the first surprise for industry, unions, and
organisations when they look at the demographics of staff is the bell curve
effect. Like income tax, ageing is unavoidable. Were getting older, individually
and as a working population. By 2050 those over 65 years will make up a
quarter of New Zealands population, more than doubling since 1999. At the
same time the growth rate of New Zealands working age population is
projected to decline and become negative by the year 2041 (Statistics New
Zealand, 2000). A large study of older workers in New Zealands largest
union, the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union,(EPMU) indicated
that many workers were changing their minds about when they would retire
and intend now to go later.
The abolition of compulsory retirement means some people will stay on
because they want to, and others will stay on because they have to. The
dynamics of work places will change with a bulge of older workers. The critical
issues for employers will be: How do you support a life-long learning
orientation at work so that employee skills remain relevant? This will be a
major employment challenge and in facing it we will all have to confront our
own stereotypes. Employers and unions are starting to ask questions about
the appropriateness of performance management as the tool for end-of
working- life productivity problems.
The worlds largest employer of contract, casual labour, Adecco, believes the
biggest workplace challenge in global terms is retaining, attracting geezers
and geezerettes- oldies to stay on and be interested in paid employment
should the anticipated labour vacuum descend upon us. Are we prepared?
The answer is decidedly, no.
Fathers
Dads are just about to become the new research growth industry and the
EEO Trust this week launched a project aimed at gathering experiences
from fathers as snapshots. New research in United Kingdom shows that
men today are responsible for a third of all childcare in Britain. The EOC
is calling for a new debate on the role of fatherhood. The EOC study also
shows that 80% of fathers say work makes it difficult to fulfil their family
duties. There is a longer hours work ethic with one in eight putting in
excessively long hours of 60 or more a week. A study of older workers in
New Zealands biggest union, EPMU, against perceived wisdom showed a
higher proportion than anticipated working more than 40 hours a week.
Intergenerational difference
New trends, though, should not disguise either the organisational imperatives
for EEO nor the systemic inequalities that exist inside and outside the public
service. Being better, generally, than the private sector is not good enough.
You occupy unique positions. Many of you already sustain EEO in your
organisations. It is time to step forward again to challenge complacency and
put EEO back on the social, political and economic agenda. Demand the
attention of your chief executives and senior management about modernising
thinking and action about equality.
We should remind ourselves that the benefits of eliminating discrimination in
all its forms in the workplace transcend the individual and the public service
and extend to the economy and society. While I deplore child labour, I am
reminded of the ubiquitous marketing slogan, Just Do It. We all need to just
do EEO.