- Conference
- 2006 National Women's Conference
- Date
- 10 October 2005
- Decision
- Carried
The Prime Minister confirmed his commitment to improving employment rights in a speech at the TUC’s 2004 Congress. He said employers do not succeed by abusing employees (14 September 2004).
The Prime Minister reaffirmed his position on a number of employment issues, confirming the government’s commitment to:
1)ensuring that people are able to exercise a genuine choice about the hours they work;
2)building on the success of family-friendly law to give more parents the opportunity to work flexibly;
3)examining the right to flexible working with a view to extending it to those with caring responsibilities.
These are all good ideas but how do we monitor and ensure that they materialise in the workplace? From 6 April 2003, parents with children under six, or disabled children under 18, had the right to apply for a flexible working pattern. Employers now have a legal duty to consider their request seriously and to refuse only if there are clear business grounds for doing so. Many employers have a paper written policy on flexible working arrangements, however it is suggested that they are not implemented. Mainly women take on the responsibility as the primary carer, they are often the ones affected by these policies.
There has been a number of cases where women on maternity leave plan their return to work, taking at face value that the employer has a flexible policy, only to find out in reality it does not exist. The excuses vary from:
a)when asked about working from home, women are met with responses – no one has asked to work from home before, it will be too expensive and not fair on the other workers, there may not be enough for you to do at home, it will not conform to health and safety or we will not be able to get insurance to cover homework – and so on;
b)when asked about flexible hours to fit in with childcare arrangements some women are met with negativity and are not supported;
c)companies do not budget for flexible working so another excuse is that there is no money in the budget to support the flexibility.
As a result of inflexibility many women are faced with the prospect of switching from a developed career in which they have invested time, money and studies, to often end up in low paid jobs with anti-social hours in order to support a young family. In situations where the woman is a lone parent, this causes added stress and poverty.
We applaud the Ford motor company who has not only opened up genuine flexible working for women but for all employees and Ford pays 52 weeks full maternity leave too.
Conference calls on the National Women’s Committee to campaign for these so-called flexible working policies to be properly implemented in the workplace by:
i)providing branches and women’s groups with the resources needed to ensure that existing agreements are monitored and improved through negotiation where they are found lacking;
ii)seeking to work with the National Executive Council, Equal Opportunities Commission and Labour Link to maintain pressure on the government to work with employers and introduce further legislation to make flexible working a reality for women workers.