Unions have called for a massive expansion of paid parental leave by extending it to 52 weeks, paying parents their actual wage and including superannuation.
A report released by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) on Monday night has suggested halving the gap in women’s pay and participation would boost the economy by $111bn.
Unions also want Labor’s childcare subsidies brought forward by six months and an expansion in gender pay gap reporting, on top of measures already promised by Labor mandating it for big companies.
The Albanese government has opened the door to union demands for multi-employer bargaining but earlier this year dropped immediate plans to pay super on parental leave, citing the $200m a year cost.
The ACTU wants commonwealth-funded paid parental leave expanded from 18 weeks to 26 weeks and then 52 weeks by 2030. Leave would be paid at the employee’s “replacement wage” – even if that was above the minimum wage.
The categories of “primary” and “secondary” carer would be replaced by a common category of “parent” under a single, shared entitlement, with incentives for shared parenting.
The ACTU president, Michele O’Neil, said “Australia has the second worst government-funded paid parental leave scheme in the developed world”, behind Bulgaria, Ecuador and Panama.
“In 2022, women shouldn’t have to give up on having a family and men shouldn’t miss out on being involved in raising their kids because paid parental leave is insufficient,” she said.
Labor’s childcare subsidies, which will save a two-child family an estimated $82 a week, should be brought forward from July 2023 to January next year, the ACTU report said.
The federal treasurer, Jim Chalmers, recently said he was considering this measure, but warned it would “cost a substantial amount to bring it forward” and “there may be some operational difficulties as well”.
Earlier in August, Chalmers told a superannuation lending round table that “we see gender disparities in retirement balances and we will fund the [super guarantee] on paid parental leave when the budget circumstances permit”.
Labor has come under increasing pressure to scrap the $243bn 10-year income tax cuts to fund social spending and ease the rising cost of living.
To boost women’s pay, Labor plans to ban pay secrecy clauses, make gender equity an object of industrial laws and establish expert pay equity and care and community panels in the Fair Work Commission.
The ACTU wants to require all organisations with more than 20 employees to report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency on their gender pay gap – including government and labour hire companies.
The commonwealth’s procurement rules should require organisations that want government contracts to “demonstrate they have taken tangible steps across their organisation to achieve gender equality”, the ACTU said.
The ACTU calculated that due to the gender pay gap, men earn $472 more each week than women. If that gap were cut in half, women would take home an additional $85bn. A further $26bn would be generated by halving the participation gap, it calculated.
The ACTU released the paper in the lead-up to the jobs and skills summit on Thursday and Friday.
On Monday the workplace relations, Tony Burke, encouraged union calls for pay deals at multiple employers, which the ACTU argues will help close the gender pay gap.
Burke said sectors such as childcare, aged care and smaller retail “workplaces where the majority of people working there are women [are] the ones that have tended to miss out on bargaining”.
“There’s a direct link between this conversation and some of the things we need to do to close the gender pay gap,” he said.
