ACTU wants flexible working hours to care for ageing parents
New Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president, Ged Kearney, has warned the Labor Party that the union body will seek support from any political party in the era of minority government, where “so much public policy is contestable”.
In her first National Press Club address, reported by Kirsty Needham in The Age, Ms Kearney said the “Labor Party has shifted ground” and had “confused and even alienated parts of its base” with its refugee and climate change policies.
“Our impact has to be on all MPs – Labor, Green, Coalition or independent,” she said.
Ms Kearney, whose former union, the Australian Nursing Federation, is not affiliated with the ALP, said the ACTU wanted greater investment of the growing pool of retirement savings in infrastructure such as roads and public transport.
The immigration debate had been prompted by a failure to resource growing cities, she said, and a pool of $3 trillion by mid-2020 could be ”funding the projects that build our cities and regions”.
The ACTU would also push for flexible working hours to allow people to care for ageing parents.
“Why shouldn’t workers have the right to leave work early, or even take off blocks of time when they have to care for a frail parent?” she said.
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive, Peter Anderson, said letting workers take time off to care for ill parents was unfair to 2 million small business owners.
“There was a real sincerity in what Ged was saying. The policy problem is that it was heavily based on redistribution of wealth rather than on growing the economic pie for the good of the country.”
