Prior to the GED the burning platform for flexible work practices could be conceptualised as comprising three elements – all of them employee-centred. The first element focussed on attracting and retaining women as a critical source of labour, the second on the quality of family life arising from work/family conflict, and the third on the unmet need for flexibility in relation to employee groups beyond women with children.
Firstly, in relation to the attraction and retention of women it was argued that flexible work practices enabled women to integrate their work and caring responsibilities, and in particular that part-time work enabled mothers to care for young children and continue paid work. The force of this argument is reflected in the significant drop in full-time labour force participation rates for women aged 25-34 years, corresponding to the years of early child-rearing, and an increase in part-time work18. However as a result of women accessing part-time work in increasing numbers (as at November 2008, 45 per cent of employed women worked on a part-time basis19), it became clear that there were hidden disadvantages. These disadvantages included a lack of quality part-time work20 and limited access to managerial roles on a part-time basis21.
These negative outcomes reflect an underlying paradigm in which the norm or mainstream mode of work continued to be full-time (only 15 per cent of men worked on a part-time basis as at August 200822) and an unwritten workplace culture that expected employees to work beyond full-time hours (the Australia Institute estimated that in 2009 full-time employees worked an additional 70 minutes of unpaid overtime each day23). In summary, this first line of argument posited that work redesign was necessary to enable women to participate in a full range of quality work, including work that is performed on a part-time basis.
A second element of the burning platform for job redesign focussed on the quality of the work/family or work/life paradigm for men and women, arguing that the current design of work was more conducive to work/family or work/life conflict than harmony. As noted above, the Australia Institute has observed an increase in unpaid overtime, and this is consistent with an (apparently) ever increasing length of the work week. In particular over a twenty year period the proportion of men working very long hours (defined as 50 hours+ per week) increased from 22 per cent (in 1985) to 30 per cent (in 2005), whilst for women the proportion increased from 9 per cent to 16 per cent24. Given this trend it was not surprising that as at 2007 the Australian Bureau of Statistics also found that “in 82per cent of couple families with children under 15 where both parents were employed, one or both parents always or often felt rushed or pressed for time. Partners in couple families where there were no children under 15 and both people were working were less likely to feel rushed or pressed for time (one or both partners always or often felt rushed or pressed for time in 67per cent of cases)25.