T

he filing system in my

office places ''parental

leave'' under the heading

''social policy''.

But I'm no longer convinced

that this is where it should remain.

I increasingly maintain that the

issue of paid parental leave is now

a hard-edged economic agenda

item and productivity

considerations demand it be

addressed.

We are told that there are skills

and labour shortages in parts of

the Australian economy. Many

commentators highlight our

construction and mining

industries as suffering from skills

shortages. The truth is skills

shortages are not uniform, but are

nonetheless real in some parts of

the country.

These capacity constraints are

adding to inflationary pressure,

and inflation pushes the Reserve

Bank to slug households through

interest rate rises.

All true, but where does the

parental leave issue come in?

The participation rate for

women in the workforce in

Australia is one of the lowest in the

Organisation for Economic

Cooperation and Development.

To add to that, when women do

work it is often in casual, low-paid

jobs. The net effect is that in our

wealthy first world democracy,

women still earn far less than men.

If we are serious about

increasing the labour supply in the

mining and construction

industries, we should start with

Australia's women.

Our industries are

comparatively highly paid. A

combination of strong demand for

workers and, we'd humbly argue, a

strong and effective union keeping

the bosses honest, means wages

are solid and work is available. So

encouraging women to get

involved in these industries would

also go a long way toward easing

the gender pay gap.

The industries our members

work in conjure images of hard

physical work, dirt, dust and sweat

(not images you'd immediately

associate with working women).

Now it is true that many jobs in

construction and mining are

physical and dirty, but equally

these days many are not.

The image of a coal miner, pick

in hand and struggling in the dark,

is a thing of the past. Mining

nowadays is a high-tech

operation. Miners operate

complex machinery it's a skilled

job requiring brains more than

muscles.

Similarly, many of the trades

and occupations in construction

could be done just as easily by

women as men. Driving a crane or

operating earth-moving

equipment doesn't require brute

physical strength, just training and

the right skills.

So if we accept that women

could do many jobs in most

industries, help ease the labour

shortage and at the same time do

good things for parity in wages

between the genders it begs the

question, why is this not

happening?

Well, a few things stand out.

Firstly, these industries more than

most in the private sector don't

have particularly female-friendly

arrangements. This problem is

historical in nature and due to the

male culture of mining and

construction. ''Women's issues''

were simply not on the agenda.

A glaring example is paid

maternity leave.

Paid maternity leave is the

exception not the rule in many

workplaces we represent.

This has to change.

That's why our union has

argued at the Productivity

Commission hearings into these

issues, that on January 1, 2010 all

women should be granted 14

weeks' paid parental leave, funded

universally by government at the

minimum wage.

This figure should then rise to 26

weeks by 2015.

Employers should be compelled

to top up this entitlement to the

worker's normal wage. This is

sensible cost-effective policy we

cannot continue to be one of only

two nations in the OECD without

the universal scheme Australian

women deserve. We've also

argued that fathers should get four

weeks' paid leave at the birth of a

child to better reflect the modern

reality of parenting.

The second issue is child care.

Governments need to

comprehensively support child-

care initiatives. The

announcement of a doubling of

the child-care rebate in the budget

is welcome and timely. But there's

a lot more work to be done.

In our view, addressing these

child-rearing issues would go a

long way to encouraging women

into construction and mining.

So paid parental leave is not a

soft or marginal issue, it's an

economic imperative.

It's high time the big end of

town stopped pushing the line

that the only way to fix labour

shortages is to bring in large

numbers of vulnerable temporary

workers from overseas it's not a

durable solution. A better answer

lies much closer to home.

John Sutton is the national secretary

of the Construction, Forestry, Mining

and Energy Union.