'Strengthening' affirmative action
The completion of a 12-month review of the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986 was recently announced, complete with a barrage of media statements by the director of the Affirmative Action Agency, Valerie Pratt, and assorted members of the Labor government.
Regarding the results of the review, Pratt was resolutely positive. "Research and consultations carried out for the review revealed widespread support for affirmative action and recognition from men and women that special workplace initiatives are necessary to improve employment opportunities for women", she said. "... the act has wide support, and many people want to see it extended and strengthened."
You bet many people want to see it "extended and strengthened"! As it stands, the act makes pitifully few demands upon the employers it covers (tertiary institutions and private corporations with more than 100 employees) and provides for a mere slap with a damp tissue for those who choose to ignore its meagre requests for information.
The "eight steps" to affirmative action require employers to:
1. "develop" an affirmative action policy
2. make a senior manager responsible for that policy
3. consult with trade unions on the policy
4. consult with employees on the policy
5. do an "employment profile" on gender and job classification
6. review existing personnel policies
7. set some "objectives" for implementation of the policy
8. monitor and evaluate the policy.
Proof of these steps must be submitted to the agency, or employers may be named in parliament. Big deal. The annual media coverage of the employers named in parliament invariably depicts them thumbing their discriminatory noses at the agency, which is powerless to do anything but give them a little free publicity.
Without quotas, enforceable by some mechanism more frightening than a mention in Hansard, decades of systematic discrimination in hiring, training and promotion will never be overcome. Their effects may even be reinforced by such means as the current "enterprise bargaining". To overcome existing imbalances, must be accorded to women in hiring, training, job upgrading and seniority adjustments.
But the review has not brought about any such change. Instead the "extension and strengthening" of the act, announced by Paul Keating on September 19, consists merely of an extension of coverage to large voluntary bodies, unions and group training schemes and increased power to the director of the Affirmative Action Agency to vary the reporting requirements of companies. Once again: big deal.
The announcement by Senator Nick Bolkus on September 9 that "... companies which do not comply with the act will no longer be eligible for contracts with the Department of Administrative Services" raised the hopes of many campaigners for equal employment opportunity. Could it be that the much-vaunted "extending and strengthening" would mean actually giving the act some teeth? No way. All that's involved is an administrative decision — which can be changed at any time.
And Valerie Pratt was quick to reassure everyone that Bolkus' gesture (similar to the existing policy of the Victorian government) didn't mean much: "It is not a penalty because it does not deprive companies of something they already had. If an organisation fails to obtain a contract or funding, it is through their own decision." Yes: and the only losers are women.
By Karen Fredericks