Judith Sloan, writing in The Australian (subscription required) on the Workplace Gender Equality Agency:
‘…Larger companies – and note that the cut-off of 100 employees is quite a low figure – will be employing additional staff (women, most likely) simply to fill in this form demanded by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.
But I come back to the fundamental question: what is the point?
According to Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, “organisations of 100 (employees) or more reporting to an agency which is dedicated to holding data about gender is absolutely critical as a piece of gender equality machinery in this country”.
A piece of gender equality machinery? What does this even mean? We expect machinery to do something, not just sit there. Is there any evidence that the compulsory collection of data does anything to “promote and improve gender equality in employment and the workplace”, which is the first object of the Workplace Gender Equality Act?
Just in case you think it couldn’t get any worse, trust me, it is seriously downhill come April Fool’s Day, unless the government does something. Companies with more than 100 employees will be required to report on the gender composition of job applicants, those interviewed for jobs, those appointed, those promoted and those who resign.
And, no, I am not making this up either.
Take a large company – a big bank, BHP Billiton, Qantas even. Assume there are 30,000 employees and the company fills 3000 jobs a year. This company will now have to inform the WGEA of the gender composition of all job applicants, interviewees, appointments, promotions and resignations classified by manager/non-manager.
Who dreamed up this stuff? They are clearly living in such a non-commercial world that they somehow thought it would be OK to ask companies to provide this information. And for companies that don’t comply, there is the hall of shame, to be posted on the WGEA website.
To be frank, all this nonsense gives gender equality a very bad name – now mostly associated with nosy bureaucrats and costly compliance. The bureaucrats talk about “compelling not only reporting but progress”.
Sure, some companies will want to collect lots of data about diversity and set targets. That is their private business. But to have mandated government regulations imposed on all larger companies to provide data, which is onerous and time-consuming to collect, for ill-defined ends – that is just madness.
The government must stop this crazy explosion of regulations. Josh Frydenberg, parliamentary secretary responsible for deregulation, I’m counting on you.’
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain, America – the same story.
The people are being murdered by red tape and “Herbert” (Herbert Jones was a minor bureaucrat In Montana during the early 20th century who was known for the enforcement of EVERY federal regulation, no matter how minor. Alas, poor Herbert was soon lynched by the cattle barons with the approval of the Great Northern Railroad.)
I work for one of these big companies and in my experience some of these people deserve it. No, it’s not that they’re feeling victimized or anything, some of these idiots actually embrace all this crap, we have the LGBT month and diversity celebrations and all that, management are fully on board with this crap, gleefully promoting this regularly.
Whilst i agree with Judith Sloan, don’t bet on a lot of the companies ‘compelled’ by these bureaucrats to support a resistance. It’s like they want to be whipped or something.
Ha ha, Quantas employs many females. They would do well to employ males to compile the data.
While I have nothing against higher education,I do have a beef with educating idiots into being professional idiots.
I get crap all the time at work from larger companies that are ran by these idiots.There is always some survey to fill out or some workplace poll required to satisfy some meaningless corporate arm breaking pat on back make work horse shit.
It doesn’t matter if the product you produce works,so long as you have the correct number of LGBT,Gaia worshiping vegan buffoons on staff.
yep ….all the corporate directors nod agreeingly “we must be social responsible” and be “eco credible”..because their customer surveys tell them so.
in the mean time; their actual customers buy more from the Chinese.
the downward spiral of decreasing profit continues- so need more surveys,more responsibilities [because that’s the ‘”answer”] until they finally realise.. “just import it”.
a PA I know quite well, evesdropped a company director one day answering a phone survey [by a commercial marketing service]……he flat out lied..all politically correct per above..but he really had no choice ;the survey’s questions were essentially rhetorical.
this “going with the flow” is barely tolerable as a paid employee, but for a business owner, although it may mean or seem like survival, is really just cowardice.[per above their actual customers are going to buy Chinese anyway].
Various Western government’s have no problem themselves in buying from the lowest bid foreign suppliers who don’t have or honour any “social,eco and gender responsibilities”- nor in any time in our futures.
wonder if any of these progressive squealing twats have ever checked where their clothes are made.
Yes,the politicians just keep piling more BS on business,especially small business which employs the most people here.Of course those in business who are in the click get a break from all that though,cause they are special it seems.
Now Obama wants to “repatriate” income taxes from US based businesses for profits made overseas.He says this will improve employment opertunities at home.Of course this is total BS and the end result will be those businesses closing their US operations and moving abroad.
OTWTH http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEplAr9MH5Y music from down South features attractive scenery.
Just hangin’ out ’round here. Hope you are.
Yes that’s some attractive scenery