VIVIENNE PORZSOLT of Green Left Weekly spoke with CAROLINE ALCORSO of the Association of Non English Speaking Background Women of Australia. Alcorso is one of the authors of a study, Bargained Away: Enterprise Bargaining and Non English-speaking Background Women Workers, published by the association.
"There are many areas which are completely untouched [by enterprise bargaining) and where workers are missing out on any potential gain in terms of wage rises or better conditions", Alcorso said. "Some of these areas are where there are a lot of non-English speaking background women working, for example, the cleaning industry.
"However, there is also the other side, where NESB women are in a very, very weak position and are therefore being subjected to quite adverse agreements. The most clear example was the clothing industry. There were a couple of major enterprise agreements which resulted in a serious deterioration of conditions but which nevertheless have been accepted by the federal Industrial Relations Commission."
Bonus systems were made more disadvantageous, time flexibility available to the workers was reduced, and penalty rates were removed.
"Then there are supposed trade-offs, which are seen to be a quite progressive step. For instance, in one agreement, family leave. But those gains, it seemed to us, were very small ... given the other things which they had lost."
The Industrial Relations Act stipulates that workers shall suffer no disadvantage in enterprise bargaining relative to the award. But, Alcorso said, "One of the things that struck us was how difficult it is to identify when there is disadvantage overall, whether an agreement represents a gain or a major defeat. One of our recommendations was that there needs to be much more tight and concrete application of that test.
"The real issue is the power of the workers at the workplace level. The NESB women said to us over and over again, that unless you have strength at the workplace level, enterprise bargaining makes it extremely difficult.
"Because workers are so weak at the shop floor level, managers have great power to influence workers. In a couple of cases, it was clear that they wore the workers down over a period of a year."
Speaking of the difficulties which NESB women have compared with other women workers, Alcorso said there were two aspects.
"In some industries like cleaning, which are based on contracts, which are competitive and relatively unorganised, it is hard to see how workers could ever get a pay rise. Whereas in areas like metals or the car industry, there are greater opportunities which can lead to benefits for workers as well as management.
"On the other hand, there is the lesser power and the vulnerability of NESB women. That's to do with their lesser access to resources like language and information, and child-care.
"The unemployment rate for NESB women is currently about twice that for other women. That's the reality, the threat of job loss. We talked to several unions who talked about how difficult it was, even when they had NESB women delegates, to keep them because they were constantly under threat from employers, being harassed."