International EEO news for December
1 December 2006: Shorts from around the world
Australia sets new minimum wage for disability
The Australian Fair Pay Commission has announced that employees with disabilities will be entitled to the same minimum wage as the standard federal minimum wage available to all workers. The Commissioner responsible for Disability Discrimination, Graeme Innes AM, welcomed the decision, saying it acknowledged the equal contribution made by employees with disability to the Australian workforce.
Read More
Read the Australian Fair Pay Commission’s overview on Disability:
Flexible Work in Britain: The Equal Opportunities Commission investigates.
Old fashioned, inflexible thinking is damaging individuals, businesses and the economy, according to research presented by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC). British men, mostly in full-time employment, work among the longest hours in the EU while women, who mostly work part-time, end up in low-paid jobs with no prospects, the report found. The result is a workforce where millions are either under-utilised in their potential, or stressed and burned out from overwork, the report says. Meanwhile the hourly pay-rate for women working part-time remains 40 percent less than the hourly rate for men in fulltime employment – a figure almost unchanged in 30 years.
Read More
Let parents decide on childcare provisions.
An overwhelming majority of British men and women surveyed feel confident of fathers’ ability to care for their children, so why isn’t parental leave equally available to both sexes, the EOC asks. “New mothers support dads' involvement in parenting; over three quarters of the mums (77%) surveyed felt that their partner is as confident as they are at caring. The new research backs earlier EOC findings showing that almost nine in ten new dads (87%) feel as confident as their partners at caring,” says the latest EOC report on parenting arrangements. The EOC is pushing for “shared parental leave” provisions.
Read More
Ethnic Minority Women at Work.
Following the recent findings of a survey on employment and career progression among ethnic minority women in Britain, the EOC has launched an investigation into why certain groups have such poor employment prospects. EOC research showed that women of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin are three times less likely to be employed than white women and Black Caribbean women are not getting into higher level jobs at the same rates as white women.