The decision by the Employment Advocate to approve a deal under which employees can cash in annual leave is regrettable. The advocate’s office announced this week that it had approved an Australian Workplace Agreement that enabled managers at an equipment manufacturing plant who have accrued more than three weeks’ leave to cash it in and continue working. The advocate’s office should be very wary of approving these sorts of arrangements.
A lot of the advocate’s work to date has been of great value. Under the Workplace Relations Act it has helped get rid of a lot of unnecessarily detailed provisions of awards and has acted against monopolistic unions coercing workers to be union members. It has allowed workers to negotiate agreements with employers in what they see as their best interests rather than through the sometimes paternalistic eyes of unions.
However, there are some core areas into which the advocate should be reluctant to tread. Annual leave is one of them. It is more than an industrial issue. It is a social one. Employees who go for months or years on end without proper leave can jeoparadise their health and the well-being of their families. One of three main functions of the advocate, in its own words, is in “”assisting workers to balance work and family responsibilities.”” That balance is upset if employees cash in leave.
Standards of living should not be measured in money terms alone. The ability of employees to take reasonable holidays each year makes for a better society. Not only do the holidays refresh employees for another year’s work, but they help build social relations, and to the extent they are used for travel broaden people’s understanding of other parts of the nation and the world. Those politicians fond of labelling Canberra as being in isolation should ponder how isolated people who cash in their annual leave might become.