Improve Child Care and Get Mothers back to work

Getting mothers back to work

As a new father with a partner that is looking at re-entering the workforce after giving birth, I am only now fully starting to understand the barriers that are placed in front of her to do this effectively.  When the people who can influence both workplace culture and community standards say the issue is a “complex” or “difficult” one, that tends to be an excuse for not doing anything.

Here I outline a “solution” which I am convinced will greatly improve the family friendly nature of the workforce.  My focus is on the State of Victoria, specifically Melbourne and women who work in the CBD, but that is not to say the same principles aren’t relevant globally.

Attitudes and Assumptions

As a former economist, I know it’s always important to state one’s assumptions up front, and on this basis I assume the following:

• The rightful place of all working-age adults is in the workplace. Following giving birth and taking maternity leave, the choice for a woman to remain outside of the workplace should be respected, but it’s impractical for most people do to so and therefore should not be regarded as expected or the norm.
• The increase in the participation rates of women in the workforce will provide significant benefits (see Benefits section below).
• The Government should expect women to return to work within 18 weeks of giving birth, since it only provides maternity leave for that period of time. If they want this to increase, they need to increase the maternity leave. It is noted the new federal Government’s paid maternity leave will be 26 weeks from a point in 2015.
• Any program of change should minimise costs to the Government or consumers where possible.
• The current systems are a major impediment to women being effective in the workplace, which directly impacts the opportunities they are given, and ultimately their level of remuneration.

Benefits

There are many benefits associated with the desire to enhance the participation of women post having children.

The business community will benefit due to:

• Increased competition for roles,  leading to a higher quality level of employees
• Improved cultural awareness due to the diversity working mothers bring to the workplace

Women will be more available to employers without having to stick to rigid schedules due to more convenient arrangements for collection of children from child care.


Commuters will benefit due to the increased services made possible by both the economies of scale caused by increased demand and the additional services provided as part of the child levy receipts from businesses.

Land holders in the CBD will benefit due to increased demand for businesses operating there due to their “family-friendly” nature.  This includes multinational businesses looking for the best location to set up in Australia.

The gap in pay rates between male and female workers is likely to be reduced due to:

• Smaller gaps in a woman’s career breaks.
• Increased productivity enabled by more flexible working hours. 
• Increased participation in competing for senior roles.

Proposal Summary

Now that I’ve outlined what we need to do, and why we need to do it, my proposal is as follows:

• An additional levy called the “child levy” will be imposed on land tax for all Victorian land and holdings which would increase the cost of land tax by up to 2% at the highest marginal rate.
• An exemption from the child levy payable on evidence of a functional child care facility being available on the land and holdings against which the tax is being levied.
• The conversion of the first, last, or other dedicated carriage of all commuter trains to be “children’s carriages”. These would be clearly marked, fitted out optimally for commuters with infants and young children, and easily accessible through additional “child friendly” gates used as part of ticketing systems. This would be partly funded by the child levy.
•  The use of the child levy to partly fund additional commuter train services and, over time, expand to tram and bus services.

Maternity Leave

Australian Governments have recently made policy changes to improve the capacity of working women to be able to take time off work to have a child with a lessening economic impact of that decision.

In 2011 the federal Labor Government introduced a paid parental leave scheme and the current Coalition Government has agreed to introduce a more generous paid maternity leave scheme by 2015.

While these moves assist families who wish to take time off work to have children, there are large impediments both anecdotal and documented of women having difficulty returning to work following their maternity leave. These solely revolve around child care.

There is a the lack of convenient child care near workplaces, a high expense in provision of such child care facilities and long waiting periods required to be placed in the child care facilities that are available.

Current Child Care Providers

Currently most child care in Victoria is provided by either local government directly, or through privately managed child care centres. This is similar nationally.  Enrolment rules will normally favour local residents over residents from other areas, meaning it is extremely difficult to get affordably child care outside your local area of residence.

As a result the availability of child care in areas where a large number of workers are employed who reside outside that council area are limited.

In addition, the high rental rate for premises in the Melbourne CBD renders child care provision expensive and not viable for private operators.

For these reasons most available child care is therefore provided close to the parents’ place of residence rather than close to their place of work.

Direct Corporate Investment

Following the failure of ABC Child Centres in 2008 and being taken over by a consortium of non-profit organisations including the Brotherhood of St Lawrence, the corporate running of Australian child care centres has largely diminished.

In addition, direct investment by corporations in child care for their staff is currently very limited.

Most child care centres are therefore either run by non-profit groups, councils, or private operators who run one or only a small number of centres.

Late Fines

Most current child care centres require the child to be collected by 6pm, after which hefty “per minute” fines are imposed, which in the modern workplace is not ideal for many workers. Many roles in the service sector have moved for many years towards project driven work and other requirements that are not necessarily governed by a clock, making the requirement of parents to leave at specific times highly inconvenient for workers and their employers.

Parents therefore need to either have private transport (e.g. car) close by or to rely on a reliable public transport infrastructure to travel to a train, tram or bus stop, then either walk or commute to the child care centre to collect their child.

The further the commute for the parent, the more at risk parents are of not getting to their child care centre on time, which ultimately leads to one of three outcomes:

• Parents reduce their hours to below the level they would consider optimal, if it is possible to arrange this with their employer.
•  Parents become rigid about the times they attend and leave their workplace, resulting in less flexible working arrangements with their employer and therefore lower productivity
• Parents leave the workplace entirely

All of these points lead to a reduction in opportunities for women for career advancement and therefore they are less likely to fulfil their career goals and the supply of high quality candidates is reduced. This impacts directly on productivity in the workplace.

Office Foyers

Most large buildings within the Melbourne CBD have extremely large, mostly unused foyer areas on their ground floor, apart from token coffee shops.

These large foyer areas would provide the perfect location for constructing infant child care centres, directly underneath the location of their parents’ employment.

Breastfeeding mothers

Breastfeeding mothers currently find it difficult to return to work as their children would be in child care centres too far away to regularly feed. This provides a further barrier to women returning to work. The provision of child care close to their workplace would enable breaks to be scheduled that are utilised for this purpose, as part of an arrangement with their employers allowing them to return to work more quickly.

Land Tax Rates

In 2013, the general marginal land tax rate for taxable value of land holdings valued at over $3,000,000 was 2.25%. This has been the same since 2009. This rate came down between 2004 and 2009 from 5% in 2004.

Given the significant drop in land tax over this period, a return to rates in between the 2004 value and the current value for some taxpayers is not considered likely to impact land owners to the point where building investment is impacted, especially since many office buildings are owned by Superannuation funds which are looking for long term value rather than short term gains. The value of a building may well be enhanced by the provision of child care facilities and not reduced over the longer term, despite the increased taxation impost.

Train Commuting

Currently commuter trains are crowded at peak times and not easy for mothers to travel to their workplace easily with an infant or multiple children.

Notwithstanding the low Government investment in train services over the past 50 years, the provision of child care close to workplaces in the Melbourne CBD or other centres is not likely to be effective unless parents can transport their infants safely.

The expert “decking out” of one carriage of each commuter train in Melbourne and other parts of the State would correct this problem. This could include the following changes:

• A new bright colour being used for the carriages (e.g. Pink, Orange).
• Easy moving of prams from platform to train, and spots for standing and sitting next to a pram.
• Easy access through ticket gates, particularly at City stations, and access to escalators and lifts that are pram friendly.

 

Final Comments

If I can create a proposal that has wide ranging benefits for limited, or zero cost, then how can we get short term thinkers in Government to implement?

First perhaps we should be asking what kind of society we want to create and debating that rather than the focussing on the issue of the day.