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Winning decent work for P&MS
Published: 29 March 2008
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Professional and Managerial Staff are hard pressed, corporate shock absorbers badly in need of decent work - that was a clear message from the UNI-Asia Pacific P&MS conference in Melbourne, Australia. Delegates called for new organising initiatives to build union membership among managers and professionals to ensure that they have labour rights to underpin decent work. The International Labour Organisation is being urged to step up its work on behalf of the world’s fast growing professional workforce. The aim is to give professionals and managers a say in their working lives, on their work rules and processes and to ensure a labour market that respects the dignity of these key workers. Delegates heard of managers who are on call 24/7, juggling just-in-time deliveries with a downsized workforce, often on performance linked pay and subjected to frequent (sometimes continuous) performance appraisals. For many, promotion into managerial grades may bring a pay rise and a fancy title but often at the price of long working hours, no clear system for dealing with their own grievances and - too often - they are excluded from collective bargaining and union membership. Delegates also heard of call centre professionals in the region being subjected to ruthless hire and fire (‘employment at will’) policies from expat US bosses. The conference agreed to defend union rights for P&MS to help them win decent work and to look at building minimum employment standards and establishing gender equality. “What is happening for many professional and managerial staff is not a work-life balance but a work-work balance,” reported Prof Rene Ofreneo, of the University of the Philippines. “Asian management systems - often family based and paternalist - are giving way to the trans-nationalisation of management in what is increasingly a regional and global labour market.” Many speakers picked up on the impact of performance payment systems - in some cases making up to 40% of salary said conference chair John De Payva of Singapore. John Vines of APESMA Australia urged unions to help members find their way through performance appraisal systems - and many young professionals do welcome feedback. “Professionals want just and fair performance appraisal systems,” said UNI’s Gerhard Rohde who called for new ways to support professional and managerial staff. Delegates were given concrete examples of union campaigns to help professional and managerial staff and to increase union membership in P&MS grades. NWJ Japan’s Shoji Morishima highlighted moves to improve the work-life balance of professionals in an Information Service industry where long hours are typical and affect health and where fewer students want to go into the sector. The union has campaigned to improve the lives of women professionals in information service who have to juggle work and home commitments (Japanese fathers are bottom of the league for helping at home - just half an hour a week in a home with a young child). Union achievements to help these women include pregnancy and child rearing leave, reduced hours to reflect commuting, teleworking and re-employment for women returning after starting a family (in a country where it is unusual for a company to re-hire a worker). “We want P&MS workers to have a sense of fulfillment at work and at home,” he said. The conference called for the development and promotion of new concepts for work-life balance, as delegates set priorities for the next four years. APESMA is continually asking its members - all professional and managerial staff - what they want from the union to help in their working lives. Career help, fair treatment at work and a professional voice top the wish list and the union has re-vamped its services to meet those aspirations. “We align services to meet the future objectives of professionals,” said the union’s Erin Wood. To help with career success for instance the union provides career maps, scholarships, coaching, a job agency and a union college that awards MBAs and provides professional development programmes. In Singapore the government helps subsidise life long learning and the unions there have been helping mature professionals get back on the career ladder, report Florence Fong of SMMWU. “Our aim is to enhance employability,” she told delegates. Australia’s Finance Sector Union is campaigning to end the pay gap that leaves women professionals 23% behind men’s pay in one of the country’s most highly profitable industries. It’s part of a collective move to build diversity management and reach out to professionals who up to now haven’t identified with unions, explained FSU’s Leon Carter. “If we are not driving the diversity agenda then no-one will be. If we leave it to employers, nothing will change,” he told delegates. |
