Work Policy

Principles

1. Work must be safe, socially useful and personally rewarding - these criteria are just as important as profitability and efficiency.
2. All people have a right to socially productive and satisfying work.
3. The Greens NSW support increased flexibility in movement between paid employment and voluntary work in the community sector. These changes require a re-thinking of the notion of 'labour force participation' and a revision, over a period of time, of the definition of what constitutes full employment.
4. As technology and more efficient work practices reduce the need for labour, it is necessary for our society to examine ways of sharing the existing amount of paid work on a more equitable basis and to explore new opportunities for work and community venture.
5. In order to provide value and worth in work we need to work towards full participation by all workers in workplace planning and decision making. Paid employment should meet award or enterprise agreement conditions and should be available to all who want it.
6. All work should provide expanded educational opportunities and skills training. Adequate resources and employment must be available to meet needs for essential social services, such as health, transport, education, housing and aged and childcare.
7. People must have the option to spend less time in paid employment and more time working in voluntary, co-operative and creative activities such as caring for children, self-fulfilment, and providing services to the community through social, environmental and cultural projects.
8. We need a system to ensure that appropriate green work takes place. This work should be recognised and rewarded as paid work and occur under appropriate conditions which extend the equity of non-traditionally valued work.
9. It is crucial that volunteer work should not displace or compete with existing paid employment. Labour exchange schemes (such as Local Employment Transfer Schemes) should be actively encouraged.
10. The Greens NSW are committed to a strong and viable public sector, generating socially and environmentally useful work in areas such as health, education, public transport and land restoration.
11. We support the use of appropriate economic incentives to encourage environmentally, culturally and socially sound industries.
12. Resources and priority should be given to ecologically sound projects, such as research into new energy sources, new technologies and benign forms of production, environmental monitoring and assessment, and ecological restoration.
13. Since the industrial revolution, labour saving technology and more efficient work practices have resulted in large increases in productivity. Coinciding with this, organised workers have fought for and gained incremental reductions in working hours resulting in a higher quality of life.
14. Today unnecessary production and vastly increased over production using designed obsolescence, is causing uncontrollable damage to the earth's ecosystem.
15. A long overdue legislated reduction in working hours should reduce unemployment. On current trends full-time workers should have a four day week by 2010. Further reductions may be the only way we can bring about environmental protection under the prevailing market driven economy.
16. Most of these policies, to be fully effective, require a national approach. However there are many things State Governments can and should be doing.

Detail

1. Establishing a Public Inquiry, involving all levels of Government, unions and employer groups, to make the achievement of lower unemployment a national priority;
2. Achieving legislative protection to guard against exploitation of casual workers;
3. Limiting regular overtime to a minimum agreed amount;
4. Outlawing institutionalised compulsory overtime;
5. Abolishing unpaid overtime;
6. Ensuring that workers are given the option of being paid for overtime hours at full award rates or receiving time off in lieu;
7. Placing a limit on the time in lieu which may be accumulated, after which overtime must be paid;
8. Encouraging the introduction of more profit-sharing schemes;
9. Introducing a State Low Income Card so that low income workers not receiving welfare assistance are able to access State Government concessions;
10. Reducing the standard working week to four days;
11. Introducing educational material as part of the compulsory secondary school curriculum which covers:
• 27.1 The rights and obligations of employers and employees under the NSW Occupational Health and Safety Act;
• 27.2 The role of trade unions;
• 27.3 How enterprise bargaining operates in our industrial relations system;
• 27.4 Education in industrial democracy; and
• 27.5 Assisting people to adapt to a life-style which is not dependent on paid work (including retirees and people whose paid work is diminishing);
12. Ensuring workplaces are free from discrimination and intimidation and that employers take all reasonable steps to ensure workplaces are accessible to all potential employees; and
13. Ensuring that small businesses are not unfairly disadvantaged by meeting compliance costs associated with implementing the above.