Jobs, Care and Justice:: A Fair Work Regime for Australia

By Barbara Pocock

Pocock explores the connections between work, care and justice.

She argues that Australia is currently missing the opportunity to build a better society that is happier and more sustainable for its citizens in the longer term. Australian governments - of all political colours - are mis-reading the current political and demographic situation of Australians and creating a work and social regime that is a step backwards from what we have had, and very far from what we now need.

What other capabilities would we, as good hearted citizens, see as essential to a just work regime?

Pocock arrives at a set of principles as follows:

Ten capabilities for a fair labour market

1. Being able to work (to have a job)

2. Being able to combine work and care over the life cycle (being able to rest, recover,

regenerate, recreate, and to personally and socially reproduce, and to maintain a

household and contribute to society) - including being able to not work when care

demands it

3. Being able to affect working time (including total hours of work, their configuration,

predictability and time off work)

4. Being able to live - in a civilised way - on one's earnings, over the life cycle

5. Being able to work with security

6. Being able to exercise and accumulate skill and experience

7. Being treated and paid fairly, and being free of discrimination

8. Being able to work in physical safety and remain healthy

9. Being able to combine with other workers to bargain over wages and conditions,

including the capacity to withdraw from work in the process of bargaining

10. Being able to have a voice at work.

We need to flesh out this skeletal framework.