We're People, Not Just A Mob Of Battery Hens
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday August 7, 1999
The army of working parents has found a new hero who won't suffer in silence
KYM Wood is a hero. She's the Steggles telesales worker who stood up to the chicken company when it changed her starting time from 8 am to 6.30 am. She's the mother of three young children who has blown wide open the rhetoric on family-friendly workplaces.
The case is a reminder that some companies can't tell a worker from a battery hen. It shows that in some quarters, government jawboning about "family-friendly" has had the impact of a feather.
But the prominence this newspaper gave the story, and the defensive reaction of the Workplace Relations Minister, Mr Reith, shows how family-hostile practices can mean bad publicity for the companies concerned.
The shape of work and family life is dramatically different from 20 years ago. Companies that treat all workers alike under some misguided notion of fairness are missing the point. These days "family-friendly" means a workplace where the work/family conflict can be dealt with sensibly. For different workers, at different stages of life, the problems and solutions will be different. Workers aren't chooks.
And managers who act like turkeys are flying in the face of research. This week, one of the world's largest surveys of managers and professionals, published in Britain, showed that of 2,000 respondents who intended to look for another job, more than one-third wanted a better fit between work and home life.
Losing experienced workers is costly. Kym Wood has worked at Steggles for a decade. The 15 telesales operators had an average 8 1/2 years' service. Two other mothers resigned over the earlier start.
Mostly, workers suffer in silence. Their marriages break down, they don't see their children. From the finance industry's 7 am starts, to the hospitality industry's "flexible start and finish times", it's take it or leave it.
But Kym Wood went to her union, and the Industrial Relations Commission. And she became a hero to that army of working parents who struggle in the dawn light with myriad tasks. Office workers in my building, arriving flustered at 9, talked of her with admiration.
They know that getting to work is the hardest part of the day for many working parents. No tantrum from a boss compares with the early morning resistance of a sleepy child. No computer glitch is worse than a missing school shoe. No supervisor's demand is harder than the last-minute cry for help with just-remembered homework. Some working parents feel as if they've done a day's work by breakfast.
Kym Wood has brought to the surface the dark side of flexibility. She was threatened with dismissal. Her husband was a shift- worker. Their search for an early morning babysitter had proved unsuccessful. They felt it unfair to impose any earlier start on the grandparents who had previously done the childminding.
It's a story of our times. In the US two years ago, I met two divorced mothers, forced by the new welfare laws into jobs that had grave effects on their children. One worked the midnight-to-dawn shift and had to send her two children to live in another town with her mother. The other started at 6 am and roused her four children at 4 to drive them to the childminder. I thought the situation was better here. But Kym Wood's children, with the earlier starting time, faced a 5 am run to the grandparents' home.
It is one thing to choose a job with family-unfriendly hours. It's another to be forced to take up such jobs, or to have your hours unilaterally changed.
Flexibility can be good for productivity. At Steggles, the earlier start for the telesales operators meant daily orders could be dispatched more efficiently. The workers supported the goal. But flexibility can't be a one-way street.
Some managers may throw up their hands in horror but enlightened companies tailor shifts to accommodate workers' family responsibilities.
Good on you, Kym, for putting the rhetoric of "family-friendly" to the test.
The company's original response to the publicity - to unearth the name of an agency which provided early morning sitters - will not be forgotten by the dawn brigade.
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald