HR this week: Ending disadvantage in the workplace

Over the past week, experts have called for a national minimum working age, business leaders have come out against DEI policies, and advocates have called for Pacific islander worker protections.

Calls for minimum working age

This week, ABC News reported on the need for a national minimum working age. The article opened by asking its readers how old they suppose they have to be to start working in Australia.

“If you answered 14 years and nine months, you’d be like many Australians. You would also be wrong,” the article read.

Indeed, there is no national standard when it comes to minimum working age. The Fair Work Act doesn’t deal with child employment; instead, the states have their own ways of dealing with it. Resulting in a “really patchy and insufficient regulatory framework”, said Queensland University of Technology Professor Paula McDonald.

To get a sense of the diversity of approaches between states, consider the following:

• The ACT allows children under 15 years of age to perform “light work”.
• The Northern Territory prohibits children under 15 from working between 10pm and 6am.
• Queensland has a minimum working age of 13 except for jobs like delivery work (which you can start at 11 years old).
• NSW prohibits only certain kinds of work for those under 18 years of age.
• South Australia and Tasmania simply prevent children from working during school hours.

“I don’t think anyone is saying that young people shouldn’t be able to work part-time, earn some money, and develop life skills and great friendships,” said the SDA union’s Josh Peak.

“There are a range of problems, though, when young and inexperienced people do enter the workforce, particularly around their knowledge of what’s right and wrong.

“And also, their capacity to stand up for themselves and call out things when they aren’t going the way that they should be.”

Professor McDonald said a national standard or consistent laws would serve to protect working children, adding that children are more susceptible to wage theft, sexual harassment, and bullying.

More businesses saying NO to DEI

As reported by BBC Worklife, businesses have been talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies since the 1960s, but the pressure from both sides has reached something of a climax this past decade.

“It used to be a ‘nice to have’ and something for the more advanced companies,” Katleen De Stobbeleir, professor of leadership at Vlerick Business School, told BBC Worklife. “But today, it has become a qualifying minimum and a topic that has received more attention from the C-suite.”

Now, in a series of high-profile statements, interviews, and actions, many leaders are coming out against DEI. Perhaps leading the charge is Elon Musk, who, in a recent tweet, said DEI is simply “another word for racism”. Or, in a show of alphabetical whimsy to rival only the sub-headline of this very article, his declaration that “DEI must DIE”.

The pushback is not new, but, said Sankalp Chaturvedi, professor at London’s Imperial College Business School, it has been building since the COVID-19 pandemic “amid a turbulent economic and political landscape”.

“This has caused individuals to focus inwards and on self-preservation, which leads to polarisation. There are higher chances of misinformation, which further stretch or breed these uncertainties,” he said.

Exploitation concerns over Australia’s Pacific islander workers

The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme allows Australian businesses to employ workers from nine Pacific islands and Timor-Leste when facing local worker shortages. Last year’s federal budget made it mandatory that such workers are given 30 hours of work per week, whereas previously, the hours worked were simply averaged over the time of their placement.

The aim of the reform, reported ABC News, was to provide better pay security for PALM workers, but some are concerned the updated system might prove problematic.

Queensland Pacific islander advocates warned the changes could emulate Australia’s “blackbirding” policy of the late 1800s “where tens of thousands of Pacific islanders were brought, often forcibly, to work in the country’s agricultural industry”.

When the scheme ended, workers who remained in Australia were neglected. They were denied citizenship and deprived of government assistance. Advocates are worried that the tighter requirements will discourage PALM employers from hiring workers, potentially leaving those workers unemployed and similarly forgotten.

“We don’t want to see a repeat of what our forefathers went through, working here, being fringe dwellers, creating issues where my people had to live off the land, creeks, rivers and the ocean to survive when there were downturns in the industry,” said Clacy Fatnowna, president of the Australian South Sea Islander United Council and descendant of the blackbird trade.

“While it’s great the seasonal workers do have guaranteed income … I can see both sides of the equation,” said Mr Fatnowna.

Instead, advocates are calling for government subsidies for workers and farmers, which could uniquely serve both interests.

“The government is a key conduit to be able to bring this together to sit down, not to just develop policy, but to fund gaps that are needed, both for the farmer and the seasonal worker to be able to get the produce out of the farm and into market,” Mr Fatnowna concluded.