Trading off basic needs
In June 1993 the Keating government reduced a "safety net" wage rise being negotiated with the ACTU by $4 a week. This wage rise had earlier been agreed in Accord Mark 7, before the 1993 election. The pay-off for the reduction in this long-awaited reward for higher prices and "productivity increases" was to be a maternity allowance paid through the social security system. This allowance was to be available to all working women who did not get paid maternity leave by their employers. It was set at $140 a week for 12 weeks, a total of $1680.
Now the government wants to renege on the deal, which it sees as too expensive. Instead, it is proposing to pay a means-tested "baby bonus" of $600 to all women who have children, regardless of whether they are working. It has gone back on the promise of no means testing, and the total payment has been slashed by more than half.
The decision flies in the face of International Labour Organisation Convention 103, to which Australia is a signatory, which says three months' paid maternity leave should be a right for working women.
Is there any fight left in the pro-Accordites who really believed this "deal" would represent a gain for women? ACTU assistant secretary Jennie George is calling on the government to deliver on Accord Mark 7's promises. Others in the ACTU, though, are claiming this decision is more "equitable" because it is available to all women.
Such claims of equity are spurious. The government has reneged. Workers have been forced into Accord deals over the past decade in return for promises of an increased social wage — better education and health care, for example, and paid maternity leave.
It should come as no surprise that the government is backing down on the maternity leave agreement, since this has been the history of the Accord years. It has been a winning strategy with which to cut workers' wages and conditions up to now — why change?
All working women deserve paid maternity leave, and all women who decide to have children should be provided with adequate social support to make that choice possible. The needs of working women should not be bartered against the needs of all women with children, especially when this is used to justify a lesser payment. Our society does have the resources to provide all these basic needs. The resources we have must be more appropriately distributed, instead of being hogged by business, which leaves us to fight over the crumbs.
By Kath Gelber