The penalty rates decision overwhelmingly screws women, the people who can afford it least

YESTERDAY’S landmark penalty rates decision overwhelming screws over the group of people who can least afford to have their pay packets cut.

OPINION

OVERWHELMINGLY it was the women of Australia who got a pay cut yesterday. It stuns me to say this but prepare for the gender pay gap to widen.

Yesterday’s decision by the Fair Work Commission to cut Sunday and public holiday penalty rates is going to hit a lot of Australians hard. According to the ACTU, half a million workers in retail, hospitality and fast food will lose up to $6000 a year.

It’s a pay cut that will be borne — almost entirely — by the people in our country who can least afford it. The low paid casual and part-time workforce.

And guess who make up the majority of that workforce? Women and young people. If you’re young and female, prepare to be royally screwed.

Here’s why women will be some of the hardest hit by Fair Work’s decision:

Women are substantially more likely to be employed on a part time or a casual basis, which means they’re the ones most likely to be working on weekends and covering public holiday shifts. More than 70 per cent of part time workers are women.

For a lot of mums, giving up their weekends to go to work at a time when dad is available to look after the kids isn’t a choice. It’s a necessity caused in part by the high cost and inadequate provision of childcare. Yesterday’s decision made that precious weekend time spent away from the family instantly less valuable for a whole lot of working mums.

70 per cent of part time workers are women. They’re the ones losing Sunday penalty rates.

Women make up roughly 46 per cent of the total Australian workforce, which means they’re in the minority in most professions. However in both retail and food services — the industries impacted by this change — women actually dominate. These are some of the few areas where women make up the majority of employees.

About 26 per cent of women who are just getting started in the workforce — those aged under 25 — work in retail. About 16 per cent of the retail workforce is made up of single parents and you can bet they’re mostly mums trying their utmost to make ends meet. These are the people who will be losing out as a result of yesterday’s announcement.

This all adds up to one thing. Fair Work’s decision will increase the very gender pay gap that the Federal Government claims it is in favour of closing.

Remember that the gender pay gap in Australia is close to 20 per cent. It’s 2017 and a woman’s work is still worth 4/5 of a man’s. Women’s time, their effort, their abilities and the kind of work they do are all considered inherently less valuable. And yesterday’s decision is going to make this a whole lot worse.

Now of course, Fair Work operates independently from the Federal Government. This isn’t the government’s decision. However Turnbull and his team have done little to distance themselves from this and have so far refused to join other parties in condemning the decision. Nor are they offering alternative strategies to support small business; strategies that don’t come at the cost of working people.

This decision couldn’t have come at a worse time for Australian women. Childcare subsidies have remained stagnant for close to a decade, while the cost of fees increases considerably each year.

The government’s determination to cull paid parental leave is unrelenting. Family payments for those on low incomes are on the chopping block and yet for some reason it’s the big corporates that Malcolm Turnbull thinks deserve a tax cut.

There are some economic realities that Fair Work has considered in this decision which are fair and reasonable. Small businesses absolutely need incentives to employ more people and for longer hours, to keep our economy chugging along and unemployment at reasonable levels.

But that doesn’t make it right that the lowest paid women in our country have to pay for it.

Jamila Rizvi is a writer, presenter and news.com.au columnist. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.