Women workers on average still earn lower wages than male workers, and will be even worse off under the federal Coalition government's new industrial relations "reforms".
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Australian Social Trends 2005, released on July 12, the wage gap between male and female workers has widened over the past decade.
The ABS found that women earned 92% of the average earnings of men (based on hourly, ordinary-time wages of full-time adult non-managerial workers in May 2004). However, the picture is much worse than this if all wages, including those for managerial positions, are taken into account, as women are still in a minority of managerial positions, particular at higher levels.
The gap also increases when calculated in terms of real wages, as women are more concentrated in casual and part-time jobs and so are likely to be working fewer hours per week. Casual employment has increased from 22% of employees in 1993 to 26% in 2003. Of these, 58% are women workers.
In a July 14 media release, Australian Council of Trade Unions president Sharan Burrow pointed out that the wage gap between male and female workers is "worst for women on individual contracts". Under PM John Howard's proposed IR "reforms", many more workers will be forced onto individual contracts.
The ACTU statement pointed out that women who are on individual contracts earn $5.10 per hour less than men on individual contracts — up to $152 per week less than men based on women's average working hours. Women on non-managerial individual contracts earn around $2.50 per hour (or $70 per week) less than women working under collective agreements.
According to the ACTU, women working in permanent part-time positions on individual contracts earn on average $5 per hour or $141 a week less than their female counterparts on collective agreements. They also earn $1 per hour or $28 per week less on average than women paid under awards. What's more, a recent study did away with the myth that individual contracts give women more "flexibility" to balance family and work, finding that only 7% of individual contracts in the private sector contained any "work-family measure".
The federal government's plans to change the way minimum wages are set, which will restrict increases in the minimum wage, will particularly threaten women's wages. Currently, 60% of workers on award wages are women.
Under the government's industrial relations "reforms", women would no longer be able to pursue claims for equal pay for work of equal value, making it harder for women to redress the entrenched lower wages in historically female-dominated industries.
Howard's IR "reforms" will be a nightmare for all workers, but women workers have even more reasons to join the fight-back against his planned attacks on the living standards of the working class.