Solidarity

Labor’s new industrial relations policy, Forward with Fairness includes this inocuous item:

A Rudd Labor Government will guarantee a right for parents to request flexible work arrangements until their child reaches school age. Employers will only be able to refuse any request on reasonable business grounds.

Fair enough — you have the right to ask for flexible arrangements, and the boss has the right to refuse if the request is unreasonable.

Not so, says John Howard. Apparently this is business’s “ultimate nightmare”, and they’d rather break the law than provide a reason for turning down such a request:

“(It) will simply result, I promise you, in a lot of employers saying ‘Well, look, I don’t want to be told how to run my business’.

“‘I simply won’t employ people with young children’ and that will end up discriminating against parents with young children, particularly against women.”

Howard clearly endorses this business tactic, notwithstanding the fact that it is illegal. Perhaps Howard really does long for those Leave It to Beaver days when employers were worried that women would either get married or “turn into something of a battleaxe with the passing years”.

But more importantly, Howard doesn’t seem to be aware that the evidence shows the opposite will occur. As Gianna points out, Howard assumes the worst of small business, instead of finding out how they’ve responded to similar initiatives elsewhere. Exactly the same law has been in place in Britain since 2003, and rather than a drop in women’s employment, there has seen a massive uptake of flexible working arrangements.

In January the UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry outlined the impressive statistics:

The right to request flexible working has been a success, helping many people to change their working patterns. Latest figures show that 47% of new mothers work flex-time compared to just 17% in 2002. And almost triple the numbers of new fathers now work flexibly.

And employers accept four out of five flexible working requests.

… We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of people working flexibly in recent years. And employers offering more types of flexible working.

56% of British employees with more than 10 employees operate flexible working hours. Homeworking last year increased to 28% from 16% in 1998. Flexi-time is up from 19% to 26%.

And it’s not just employees who benefit from the right-to-request laws. The Equal Opportunity Commission surveyed the academic research and found (pdf, p 7) that workplaces that accepted flexibility requests benefited in terms of premises costs, customer service and satisfaction, employee engagement, wellbeing, and recruitment and retention.

John Howard would say that these benefits are available without right-to-request laws. After all, there’s nothing to stop you asking your boss for flexible arrangements now. And that’s true — but it misses the point. The right-to-request laws are designed to get business to genuinely consider requests.

It’s understandable that the proprietor of a small business, working on a heavy schedule, would dismiss a request for flexible hours out of hand. At first glance, it’s a disruptive change that might take some time to resolve, so it’s easier to just say no. But under a right-to-request system, the employer will need to take some time to consider the request. Under the UK model, the employer must meet with the employee within 28 days of the request, and then notify them of the decision within 14 days after the meeting. There’s no interference from an IR bureaucrat, there’s just a requirement that an employee’s request is given a fair hearing by the boss.

The UK experience suggests that this uncomplicated, undemanding system has led to many more businesses introducing family-friendly arrangements. When the employer stops to think about it, it’s not as difficult as it initially seems. And if there’s a genuine business reason to refuse, then the employer just has to explain it — and the business reasons can’t be questioned by (in Labor’s case) Fair Work Australia, as long as they’re explained in writing to the employee.

By no stretch of the imagination could this be considered business’s “ultimate nightmare”. It’s an unobtrusive system that gently prods employers to genuinely discuss flexible working arrangements if their employee submits a request. And it works! The fact that Howard is so hyperbolically opposed to it — to the point where he justifies unlawful sex discrimination — shows just how out-of-touch he is from the way real businesses actually operate.