The ACTU (still) knows better

Take an example: mum is offered extra overtime at the manufacturing plant where she works because other workers are off sick. This means she will not be able to pick up the children as usual. However, dad, with an hourly income less than mum’s hourly overtime rate has the flexibility to knock off early for the time mum has been offered overtime. The result is that the children see a bit more of dad than usual, mum has a few weeks of exhausting work, but there is enough extra money in the piggybank to upgrade the annual holiday a notch.

This, according to the ACTU and the ALP is not an option that should be available to “lower income” workers.

The very rejection of the ACTU’s approach to this issue in 2002 by the AIRC rested on this presumption: That what was “reasonable” or “unreasonable” in each circumstance depended upon the circumstances of the individual worker in question. A single prescriptive formula may assist some, but only at a cost to others.

There is simply no reason at all to impose a prescriptive formula of “thou shalt nots” where a flexible approach will deliver what is best for an individual worker according to their own circumstances.