Paid maternity leave in 'best practice' organisations: introduction, implementation and organisational context

Australian Bulletin of Labour, June, 2007 by Sara Charlesworth

Given the current policy reliance on individual enterprise initiatives to provide for PML in the private and community sectors, we need to gain a better understanding of the extent to which such voluntary provision is likely to provide an adequate substitute for a national PML system. To date, we know surprisingly little about why or on what basis individual enterprises introduce PML (Baird, Brennan and Cutcher 2002, p. 15). (2) My aim in this paper is to shed some light on these issues by drawing on case study research about the organisational contexts and drivers to equal employment opportunity (EEO) and diversity initiatives, including PML. While these are 'best practice' case studies of larger organisations, they illuminate the constraints on, and the limits of, individual enterprise provision of PML. Following an outline of the relevant policy and industrial relations framework and the case study research on which this paper draws, the main drivers and the external and internal contexts to the introduction of, or increase in, the quantum of PML in the case study organisations are set out. The paper then examines the differential quantum and eligibility criteria for PML in the individual organisations before going on to assess the 'practical availability' of other family-friendly benefits provided that support and complement PML.

Paid Maternity Leave: The Australian Policy Context

When Australia ratified CEDAW in 1983, it did so with the specific exclusion of Article 11(2)(b), the provision that requires signatories to take appropriate measures to introduce paid maternity leave. Today, almost a quarter of a century later, the Australian Government continues to maintain its CEDAW reservation to the introduction of paid maternity leave. In a 2006 report to the CEDAW committee, the head of the Australian Government Office for Women stated: 'Regardless of Australia's reservation with regard to paid maternity leave, Australia has a unique and comparatively generous system in place', referring to unpaid parental leave available, data which the Government claimed indicated 45 per cent of female employees receive PML, as well as the maternity payment made to mothers when they have a baby (Flanagan 2006, p. 9). The maternity payment, introduced in 2004, is designed to help with the costs of a new baby, but this welfare payment does not constitute paid maternity leave as envisaged under CEDAW. It is not intended to encourage women's ongoing attachment to the paid workforce; it is not intended to compensate working women for income forgone as a result of childbirth; and it is not linked to preventing discrimination against women in employment (Charlesworth and Charlesworth 2004, p. 862).

A right for Australian female employees to unpaid maternity leave was won more than 25 years ago in a test case brought by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). In 1990 the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) reviewed the 1979 test case decision and extended it to the concept of parental leave (paternity, maternity and adoption leave), which was introduced into federal awards (O'Neill 2004, p. 1). Initially, casual employees were excluded from both maternity and parental leave and only employees with 12 months or more continuous service were eligible. However, another test case decision by the AIRC in 2001 allowed unpaid parental leave to be extended to casual employees with 12 months continuous service. In Australia, such test cases provide a basis for reasonably general coverage and provide the main 'mandated' family-friendly benefits in Australian workplaces. Apart from unpaid maternity/parental leave, other test cases have led to the provision of family/carer's leave, which provides a limited right to access existing forms of paid leave to care for family members. Unpaid parental leave and carer's leave are now part of the new Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard introduced in the 2006 'Work Choices' amendments to the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cwlth).