Force men to work less to improve gender equality

[Metaphor]

Call for working hours to be capped in Australia to improve gender balance
http://www.theage.com.au/business/w...lia-to-improve-gender-balance-20160527-gp5xp4

Working hours should be more effectively capped at 38 hours a week to make it easier for men to share the caring load in the family home and for women to participate in paid work.

A new report by a national network of 34 academics who specialise in work and family policy is calling for a firmer restriction of working hours to a maximum 38 per week, with the exception of mutually agreed overtime.

The network, known as the Work + Family Policy Roundtable, has also urged the federal government to impose a regular pattern of hours for casual and part-time workers, with a minimum of four hours of work per shift.

The Roundtable's Work, Care and Family Policies 2016 Election Benchmarks also call for paid palliative care leave, domestic violence leave and paid annual leave on a pro-rata basis for casuals. An extension to the right to request flexible working hours to all workers is also recommended along with a right to appeal an employer's refusal of such requests.

Roundtable co-convenor Professor Sara Charlesworth from RMIT University said many Australian women caring for children tended to work short part-time hours.

"We have one of the most gendered and polarised working time regimes in the OECD," she said.

"When women become mothers they tend to work very short part-time hours. As soon as a man becomes a father his hours of work go up.

"Australian male full-time hours tend to be much longer than the OECD norm."

Professor Charlesworth said Australia had among the longest working hours and many men tended to work far longer than 38 hours per week.

When women have children, many end up working part-time in lower quality jobs. There needed to be a greater balance allowing for women to engage in paid work and men in unpaid care.

"Because everything is so inflexible women will often look for work which allows them to juggle child care," Professor Charlesworth said.

"The rationale for putting a cap or limit on full-time hours is a way of evening out the distribution of paid and unpaid work.

"If you have a two-parent household with care responsibilities, then that limits the total time available for care. Women tend to be the shock absorbers. They are the ones adjusting themselves around what are often the fixed long hours of their partner."

The report to be released on Monday says properly enforced workplace regulation is needed to support carers who work.

The report says many worker-carers, mainly women, undertake part-time or casual work as a strategy to reconcile work and care – 46 per cent of female employees work part-time and more than half of all employees working part-time are employed on a casual basis.

"These jobs do not have the same security and predictability as full-time employment for which many women pay a high price: job insecurity, low life-time workforce participation and income, including in retirement," the report says.

"Restructuring of employment regulation to ensure recognition, support and decent working conditions for working-carers – no matter who their employer or what their employment status – is a critical long-term goal."

There are lots and lots of things I could say about this proposal, none of them favourable.

But let's see if anyone in the media calls this out as heterosexist, as it clearly is -- imagining, as it does, that opposite-sex couples with children are so important that public policy should be shaped solely around what these academics imagine their needs to be. As a gay man without children, my working hours should be restricted because working fathers work too much compared to mothers. And child-free women need to be forbidden from working more than 38 hours too.

But it's worse than heterosexist; it can't possibly work, either. Apart from the vaguely-referenced 'agreed overtime' which will ensure men will work as many hours as they always did, there are many jobs where, when hours are cut, the workload is not actually cut at all. My sister moved to 4 days a week after her first maternity leave, and was paid for 4 days a week -- but she was of course given 5 days of work in those 4 days.

It's also bizarre that academics came up with this. Academics -- successful academics at any rate -- should know that '38 hours per week' has never applied to salaried jobs no matter what the 'official' hours are. (My Big Boss is paid for a 37.5 hour week, and I guarantee you she is putting in considerably more than that).

It'll never become law of course, but it's just another sad chapter in the neverending quest to right the moral wrong of men and women making free choices.

Oy vey.

 

[bigfield]

It does not recommend that anyone be forced to work less or be forbidden to work more than 38 hours per week.

 

[dismal]

It does not recommend that anyone be forced to work less or be forbidden to work more than 38 hours per week.

Huh?

Working hours should be more effectively capped at 38 hours a week

What do the words "be" and "capped" mean in your version of English?

In mine they would imply there is 1) a cap and 2) someone somewhere is doing the capping.

 

[bigfield]

Huh?

Is the font too small? Try using the zoom function on your browser.

Working hours should be more effectively capped at 38 hours a week

What do the words "be" and "capped" mean in your version of English?

In mine they would imply there is 1) a cap and 2) someone somewhere is doing the capping.

I'm very proud of you for knowing that capping something entails a cap.

It still doesn't mean that the employees are forced to work less or forbidden to work more than 38 hours per week.

As the article says, "A new report by a national network of 34 academics who specialise in work and family policy is calling for a firmer restriction of working hours to a maximum 38 per week, with the exception of mutually agreed overtime."

The actual report recommends "...restricting maximum weekly hours of work to 38 hours except by mutual agreement..."

The existing National Employment Standards require that "An employer must not request or require an employee to work more than the following hours of work in a week, unless the additional hours are reasonable: for a full-time employee, 38 hours..." and is very permissive as to what is reasonable.

Under existing law, employees cannot simply refuse to work reasonable amounts of overtime required by their employer. The report recommends that employees be given the right to refuse.

 

[laughing dog]

It'll never become law of course, but it's just another sad chapter in the neverending quest to right the moral wrong of men and women making free choices.

Societies engage in the "moral wrong" of men and women making free choices all the time for good reason. For example, most societies frown on making the free choice of pedophilia or child abuse or arson. Free choices are and should not be the sine qua non of public policy.

 

[JonA]

It'll never become law of course, but it's just another sad chapter in the neverending quest to right the moral wrong of men and women making free choices.

Societies engage in the "moral wrong" of men and women making free choices all the time for good reason. For example, most societies frown on making the free choice of pedophilia or child abuse or arson. Free choices are and should not be the sine qua non of public policy.

The depravity of today's Left: equivocating choosing whether or not to have a job with choosing whether or not to molest children.

 

[laughing dog]

The depravity of today's Left: equivocating choosing whether or not to have a job with choosing whether or not to molest children.

The stupidity of today's right: the inability to distinguish between principle ("free choices") and an example.

 

[Trausti]

It'll never become law of course, but it's just another sad chapter in the neverending quest to right the moral wrong of men and women making free choices.

Societies engage in the "moral wrong" of men and women making free choices all the time for good reason. For example, most societies frown on making the free choice of pedophilia or child abuse or arson. Free choices are and should not be the sine qua non of public policy.

The examples you cite are not voluntary/consensual relationships.

 

[laughing dog]

The examples you cite are not voluntary/consensual relationships.

True, but they are free choices. There are other free choices that are restricted in some societies. For example, the age at which one can be employed is restricted in many societies. My point is that free choice while a guide to public policy is not the overriding principle.

 

[Trausti]

The examples you cite are not voluntary/consensual relationships.

True, but they are free choices. There are other free choices that are restricted in some societies. For example, the age at which one can be employed is restricted in many societies. My point is that free choice while a guide to public policy is not the overriding principle.

While some free choices ought to be restricted to have an ordered society, to me the question is how much control should government - that is, other people - have over our lives? My sense is that there is a subset of people who desire to regulate and micromanage others. If they can no longer do it with religion, they'll do it with government. But if I, or my wife, or my friends, or my neighbor, who I wave to on the street only out of social obligation, voluntarily chose to work X hours a week, or stay at home with the kids, the government - that is, other people - should have no say in it.

 

[laughing dog]

In the case of the OP, unless there is some overarching social cost to the current situation of the distribution of work, the entire proposal as a whole seems like overkill. It seems to me that enforcement effort and costs outweigh the benefits. However, the part that bigfield pointed out about giving employees more leeway in refusing overtime is worth considering in more detail.

 

[Toni]

Has anybody read this? What do you think?

http://fortune.com/2015/10/06/sweden-6-hour-work-day-what-u-s-can-learn/

 

[JonA]

The depravity of today's Left: equivocating choosing whether or not to have a job with choosing whether or not to molest children.

The stupidity of today's right: the inability to distinguish between principle ("free choices") and an example.

The right should really get a handle on that. And so should you.

The OP was clearly talking about people choosing the amount they work. Your introduction of pedophilia and child abuse was simple bullshit: the typical smear tactic nonsense of trying to relate one's opponent to some ridiculous position - favored by members of both extremes when they got nothing.

You screaming about pedophilia is no better than Donald Trump calling the President a terrorist.

 

[JonA]

The market for leisure.

Look it up, folks.

 

[laughing dog]

The right should really get a handle on that....

You have yet to demonstrate you can tell the difference between the principle and an example, so your responses have been off point to say the least. How about you actually address the actual point (that at least one other poster got) that free choices - whether about work or anything else - should not be the sine qua non of public policy - instead of continuing your lack of intelligent responses?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It does not recommend that anyone be forced to work less or be forbidden to work more than 38 hours per week.

English, do you speak it??

 

[JonA]

The right should really get a handle on that....

You have yet to demonstrate you can tell the difference between the principle and an example, so your responses have been off point to say the least. How about you actually address the actual point (that at least one other poster got) that free choices - whether about work or anything else - should not be the sine qua non of public policy - instead of continuing your lack of intelligent responses?

Every literate participant in this thread understands the OP to be discussing free choices as they relate to participation in the labor market.

I am sorry some are missing this obvious fact.

 

[laughing dog]

You have yet to demonstrate you can tell the difference between the principle and an example, so your responses have been off point to say the least. How about you actually address the actual point (that at least one other poster got) that free choices - whether about work or anything else - should not be the sine qua non of public policy - instead of continuing your lack of intelligent responses?

Every literate participant in this thread understands the OP to be discussing free choices as they relate to participation in the labor market.

The irony of that response given the bold-faced content is truly overwhelming. Come on, at least look like you have something remotely intelligent and relevant to say.

 

[Draconis]

Perhaps the amount of work needs to be somehow taken into consideration. I've seen some "worker" do very little all day long. And then there's the jobs I've done, which are "busy".

 

[laughing dog]

Has anybody read this? What do you think?

http://fortune.com/2015/10/06/sweden-6-hour-work-day-what-u-s-can-learn/

A very interesting idea. I wonder if any US firms will test it out.