Part time work - the low wage ghetto for women
- 16 April 2007
Part-time work suits a lot of women, but issues of low pay are compounded when hourly rates for part-timers are slipping relative full-timers, says Victoria University researcher Pru Hyman.
“In the old days part-time work tended to be pro-rata, not paid much worse than fulltime work, and I think that’s slipped,” Hyman says.
“The public sector were pioneers in offering good permanent part-time work, but that has eroded, she says.
“There’s evidence that on the whole people who are in part time work waste less time and are more productive per hour than people in fulltime work, so they ought to be getting paid more per hour and they’re often paid less per hour instead.”
Hyman estimates that around seventy percent of part-time work is done by women, but a growing number of them want more hours than they can get. “For most it’s a straightforward income thing.”
The Household Labour Force survey asks people if they are happy with their hours. The percentage saying they would like more hours if they could get them went up from 17 percent in December 2005 to 21 percent, or 97,500 people, in the December 2006 quarter. The survey showed that there were 461,200 people employed part-time in the survey period.
The National Advisory Council of Employment of Women (NACEW) has been doing research around precarious work.
NACEW’s recommendations include applying a set of principles to government contracting policies based on fairness, equity and responsibility. The Council recommends that the government only contract (directly or indirectly) with a provider of services (in those three sectors) if that provider:
- pays a living wage (as opposed to a minimum wage) to those who perform those services; and
- (as far as is practicable) provides regular and standard hours notified in advance; and
- pays travel time and expenses for those who are required to travel to different places of work within the working day; and
- demonstrates a commitment to good labour relations; and
- demonstrates a commitment to pay and employment equity; and
- demonstrates a commitment to paid training and skill development for all staff.