In The Daily Fix, Crikey taps into the wisdom of experts and community leaders to find solutions to problems. Today: wage theft.
It’s not a stretch to say that gender inequality persists in the workplace, and it isn’t changing any time soon. On top of the gender pay gap (which exists across all occupations and industries), women are over-represented in part-time and casual work, often due to the unpaid caring roles they are expected to undertake.
The underpayment of wages is just another compounding factor that must be seen as a gendered issue that intersects with other forms of inequality.
The sheer extent of non-compliance by employers tells us there are profound problems with the enforcement of wage laws and entitlements across all areas of work in Australia, problems that disproportionately impact women — in particular, young and/or migrant women who often rely on minimum wage, modern award systems and the gig economy.
We need lawmakers, politicians, businesses and regulators to see wage theft as a gendered issue which requires an intersectional strategy.
We need policy and legislation to break down the systemic barriers that create “feminised” sectors and that fail to address gender inequality in the workplace. We also need better wage transparency and stronger legal protections for workers to properly hold businesses to account.
Michelle Phillips is the CEO of the YWCA.
Thanks for your thoughts Michelle. I’m sure you mean well. You write like a young person. As long as people of your age remain bound up in your identity politics views of the world, the ruling class will keep justifiably holding you in contempt as they laugh all the way to the bank.
Wage theft and all that goes with it are class issues and you’ll only deal with that via class based collective action of the form familiar to perhaps your parents and certainly your grandparents.
You however are in the luxurious position of being able to have two bob each way with this gender and intersection talk. You get to be both a well paid manager and to claim solidarity with the sisterhood. A more realistic class based world view would be more problematic.
Good luck with it all though.
Thanks for your thoughts Michelle. I’m sure you mean well. You write like a young person. As long as people of your age remain bound up in your identity politics views of the world, the ruling class will keep justifiably holding you in contempt as they laugh all the way to the bank.
Wage theft and all that goes with it are class issues and you’ll only deal with that via class based collective action of the form familiar to perhaps your parents and certainly your grandparents.
You however are in the luxurious position of being able to have two bob each way with this gender and intersection talk. You get to be both a well paid manager and to claim solidarity with the sisterhood. A more realistic class based world view would be more problematic.
Good luck with it all though.
“We need lawmakers, politicians, businesses and regulators to see wage theft as a gendered issue which requires an intersectional strategy.”
There’s a lot left unsaid in this assertion that would otherwise be needed to show it as a viable path forward.
What would an intersectional strategy look like? How would it differ to an approach that recognises that this issue potentially affects anyone irrespective of race, gender, education, etc.? And what would be the markers that such a strategy is working?
Yes, Michelle. Wage theft is much more ‘theft’ than infringing copyright because unlike copyright infringement the lost money in wage theft is denied to the worker.
And you are also correct to raise the gender issue. My sister worked for years as a nurse for a ‘christian charity’ (it wasn’t the Y) who regularly advised her of superannuation payments and accumulation each year. But when she left to work in another charity it turned out that none of the superannuation was actually paid…she lost the lot (really she never had it).