Putting domestic violence on the agenda with workplace rights. Ludo McFerran, Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of New South Wales ludo.mcferran@unswedu.au http://www.austdvclearinghouse.unsw.edu.au/dv_workplace_rights_entitlements_project.htm Conference theme: Women s access to their rights and entitlements Synopsis The Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse has been funded until the end of 2011 by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to promote the introduction of domestic violence clauses in industrial instruments, and to introduce widespread and sustainable change in workplace culture to support working women experiencing domestic violence to stay safely in the jobs, and in their homes. The paper will describe some of the challenges: engaging the domestic violence sector in support of working women, and employer support for policy rather than entitlement, and some of the complexities, such as balancing commitments to confidentiality with workplace safety, but also exciting opportunities such as proactive policies on phone and email abuse at work. The paper will also discuss the relevance of this project in the context of a country such as Timor Leste, by describing the evidence of domestic and violence family violence, and the government s response. The author suggest that the Australian solutions have not always been the best for women and children, nor the most resource- effective, and concludes that are lessons to be learnt from the thirty-five years of Australian experience: learn from our mistakes and leap frog over some of our systems.

Background

I work for the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse. Our job is to look at what works to reduce domestic and family violence, and report back to services working with domestic violence, politicians, policy makers, and academics. For the past year and until the end of 2011 we have been funded by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to promote the introduction of domestic violence clauses in industrial agreements and awards. This is done through collective bargaining by partner unions. Our slogan is Safe at Work, Safe at Home. We want women or any person experiencing domestic violence, to be able to stay safely in their homes and to stay economically independent by staying safely in their jobs. We do this because keeping your job is critical to leaving a violent relationship and recovering. But we also know that the pressure of domestic violence can affect your work performance: it can prevent you getting to work, being late for work, being distracted at work, and being anxious and ill

at work. This can put your job at risk. So can some of the safety aspects when your ex-partner (or even current partner) makes abusive phone calls, sends abusive text messages to your work, or comes to your workplace and threatens you and your co-workers. There are real and concrete consequences for many women. Compared with women with no experience of violence, women with a history of domestic violence have a more disrupted work history and are consequently on lower personal incomes, have had to change jobs more often and are employed at higher levels in casual and part time work than women (Franzway et al 2007). Being forced out of your home and out of your job are all part of the hurting and punishing that is domestic violence, and if this drives women back to the abusive partner because of fear and poverty, then it is a really effective tactic by the abusive person. When the violence comes out from behind closed doors at home, when the abusive person is prepared to contact work, or go to work to abuse their partner, this tells us that the risk factors are really going up. Alarm bells should be ringing because the violence is getting worse and more dangerous. We wanted protection for women experiencing domestic violence when it affects them at work to be a right, available to all working women and men if needed. We wanted workplaces to be involved in providing this protection, not in an ad hoc way, but across the country and in every industry. We wanted some very concrete things: paid leave, so that you can go to court to get an order to protect you and your children, and keep your abusive partner away from your home and workplace, and real safety planning so that you and your co-workers can get on with your job. Real protection and support in the Australian workplace is possible because of the legal protection provided by domestic violence orders in all states and territories of the country. These orders can specify that the person needing protection is not approached, harassed or contacted at their workplace. This also means that workplaces can actively support staff by calling the police and providing evidence if an order is breached or broken: that is if an employee is approached, harassed or contacted at their workplace when the order says this must not happen. Support to stay living in the home for those needing protection is also possible because since the 1990s there has been an increase in outreach domestic violence programs in Australia. That means support workers going to people s homes to support them rather than people giving up their homes and going into a refuge. The protection order can specify that the protected person will live in the family home, usually with the children, and if necessary will order that the abusive person leaves the home and stays away. The support programs provide, for example, changes to locks and personal alarm systems. This level of support requires the full cooperation of police, the courts, support services and the community. It has meant a real change of message: from why doesn t she leave? to why doesn t he stop this behaviour, and if he can t, he must go? Safe at Home, Safe at Work solutions probably costs Australia less money than seeing women lose their jobs and having to find a new home in different communities. So I don t think it is fundamentally an issue of resources. But it does needs everyone to be in agreement about this message, from the Prime Minister down to the next door neighbour. It also needs your workplace to be supportive, as in Australia most women experiencing domestic violence are in paid employment.

Our progress report What has been done in the past 12-18 months is this: y Unions have negotiated domestic violence clauses for local and state government workers, for nurses, and for employees in private industry. These clauses include from 5-20 days extra paid leave for reasons of domestic violence, such as the need to go to court to get your protection order.

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We are now having a national discussion run by the Australian Law Reform Commission on amending the Australian Fair Work Act, which provides protection to 95% of Australian workers, to include domestic violence clauses, automatically covering most Australian workers. We have run a survey of union members with over 3000 respondents to provide us with baseline data on the extent and nature of domestic violence in the workplace. We often cite American research which found that up to 10% of the workforce reported some form of domestic violence in the previous twelve months, and wanted to test this in the Australian context.

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The clauses need to be well implemented in workplaces that have an understanding of how people are affected by domestic violence, so we have developed a series of resources to support workplaces introduce better policies and practices. These include: y training for the go- to- people who will be assisting workers experiencing domestic violence y how to do a safety plan for the individual affected all the whole workplace y and a new website with information for working people experiencing domestic violence.

It has not all been plain sailing. y We have had many discussions with employer groups, who have generally argued for non enforceable policy rather than entitlements, but we do feel that we are developing a productive understanding with the Chambers of Commerce in particular. The Australian domestic violence sector has limited experience supporting working women, and we need to raise the awareness and skills of the sector, as well as make sure the support is available to women in their homes and workplaces. One of the questions raised by the Australian Law Reform Commission has been how we understand the impact of domestic violence as an occupational health and safety issue. There is not an obvious connection, as the violence is not generated from within the workplace. But we believe that employers do have a responsibility for the safety of their workers. We recommend that Safe Work Australia creates a specific Code of Practice for family violence related workplace safety risks. The issue of balancing the rights of employees to confidentiality with the need for a safe workplace has come up often. Who do you tell in the workplace to make sure it is a safe workplace? How do you ensure that co-workers don t inadvertently pass on critical

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information to the abusive partner? These are issues we need to work out in practice with partner unions and employers. y Another issue we are working through in relation to confidentiality has been the requirement for certain professions (police, teachers and health workers) to report domestic violence to the police and other authorities.

Time and time again, we have to acknowledge that we are working on implementing new rights with no models to follow. We recognised this when we piloted the training and found that domestic violence trainers generally don t have the workplace knowledge needed, and that industrial trainers usually lack the domestic violence knowledge. The training is more like workshopping: discussing with human resources staff and union delegates how we are going to get this right.

This has also meant that we have had to create innovative policies, such as one on abusive phone calls and emails. We do not think that it is appropriate to recommend that, for example, phone numbers are changed. This will be slow down the opportunity to get the employees work performance back up to speed. Instead, the policy recommends using modern telecommunications technology to not only protect the worker with the same number and email address, but to collect evidence where there has been a breach of a protection order. Our goals We wanted in the timeframe of this project for domestic violence clauses to become an Australian national standard practice: how we protect working women in Australia. We wanted the clauses to be supported by policy created in the workplace to make sure they are properly implemented. We have applied for the project to be ongoing; we think there is a lot more work to be done getting the training right, supporting all the clauses that are in the pipeline, and testing that we are getting the outcomes for women and children that we want. We want to make sure that in the long-term those working in the most precarious and exposed jobs, those in small business, and those in regional and remote workplaces get the same protection as everyone else. We also wanted to explore if domestic violence clauses would work in other countries, to explore the relevance of this project in a country such as Timor Leste: with very high reported rates of violence against women and without a comparable domestic violence service system and criminal justice response.

Our understanding of Timor Leste We have come to this conference to listen and to learn. But at the Clearinghouse we reported on the 2008work, Violence Against Women in Melanesia and East Timor (2008), by AusAID s Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE). This report is an assessment of the effectiveness of current approaches to reducing violence against women in Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and East Timor. Violence Against Women in Melanesia and East Timor is a sobering account of the disadvantage and danger experienced by many women and girls in the region, and the challenges faced by local women with few resources to provide support and drive change. In relation to Timor Leste, the report stated that:

violence inflicted on women and girls during the Indonesian occupation and subsequent military conflicts first propelled violence against women to the national and international arena (p.191).

Since then, it has been increasingly recognised that women experience a great deal of violence in normal life, particularly in the family. Collaborative research in East Timor (Hynes et al 2003) found that intimate partner violence and sexual violence were the most common forms of violence in the country i. More recently, a baseline study (Alves et al 2009) supported by Unifem in two districts of Timor Leste found domestic violence is a normal occurrence for many Timorese women. This report was largely produced by Timorese women and is an important insight into special aspects of culture or custom as they affect women. When discussing the primary cause and the contributing factors to sexual and gender-based violence, the report lists among a number of factors:y The traditional role of women in a society that is strongly preserved and structured into the patriarchal system where women are placed as the "second class citizen/family member in Timorese society contributes to SGBV. Their roles are mainly in the private or domestic sphere (nature and nurture) such as responsibility for the children and the housework. Women have less right or access to education, health, family property or ownership of the land etc. Men are dominant, powerful, and superior and are the decision makers in the society. The culture of dowry or barlaque that initially was a symbolic act to value women and to establish and strengthen new and close relations between the bride and groom s family (traditionally known as fetosan and umane) is now been wrongly used or misinterpreted by some. Now barlaque is often considered as a transaction between families usually in a form of buffalos, gold, money, etc. and means that women will be the absolute property and possession of the man. All the conflict resolutions fora or mediation in the traditional system are controlled by men and in sexual violence cases, while the family will be present, men are responsible for making the main decision in the process of Kasu-Sala or confession and declaration of guilt. The survivor/victim of sexual violence will not make any decision with regard to her case and the penalty or fine paid by the perpetrator/suspect will be given or delivered to the victim s relatives such as uncles or brothers. (p.16)

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Perhaps most telling is the attitude of women in Timor Leste themselves to domestic and family violence. The 2010 demographic and health survey (National Statistics Directorate) surveyed over 13,000 women between the ages of 15-49. The survey found: y y approximately a third of women had experienced a form of domestic or family violence since the age of 15 28% had experienced domestic or family violence in the past 12 months (predominantly being slapped, pushed, shaken or having objects thrown at her, resulting in cuts, bruises, and aches) for married women the abusive person was their partner in nearly 74% of cases

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A significant contribution made by this survey may be a better understanding of the relationship between work and experiencing domestic violence. The report records that 44% of married women were employed in the past 12 months, with most working in the rural industry or being selfemployed rather than receiving cash payments for work. The evidence from the survey is that reporting decreases with employment, particularly for those working in the rural/self-employed categories. Does this mean that employment reduces violence, or reporting?

Perhaps the evidence on help seeking is helpful. 50% of women did seek help, usually from family and friends (only 4% from police and 1% from social services). Women were more likely to seek help if employed, particularly those working in the rural/self-employed categories. So I think it is a positive contributor in the Timor Leste situation. But to come to the point about attitude, because ultimately it is women themselves who must drive the changes in society that make violence unacceptable. The report found that 86% of women (more than men) thought that domestic violence was in some circumstances justifiable. These circumstances included where children are neglected their mothers. I think this finding does raise many questions and challenges. Without in any way condoning any sort of violence against women, I do question what this finding means in a society that has been driven to the edge by colonisation and war. I hope we can discuss this further here today.

In terms of progress made in Timor Leste by the government, Violence Against Women in Melanesia and East Timor found that of all the countries in this study, East Timor s Government has taken by far the strongest lead on violence against women (p.203). The examples cited included: y Only the crisis support centres in Timor-Leste provided onsite emergency shelter. The report also described the safe space in Dili Hospital to treat victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse (p.198). That Timor Leste had a better co-operative approach to gender based violence than other countries in the report, citing the Office of the Secretary of State for the Promotion of Equality. The Office address gender based violence as one of its four core programs for promoting women s equality and empowering women, and is credited with remarkable achievements at the level of national policy and implementation in the six years it has been operating (p.192) The promotion of the political empowerment of women as a means of preventing violence against women. Remarkable progress has been made in increasing women s participation in public decision-making and leadership (p. 200). East Timor is the only country visited that has an active organisation of men, The Association of Men Against Violence (p.202).

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Violence Against Women in Melanesia and East Timor did, however, caution that this impetus would need to be sustained, and that cultural barriers would need to be overcome. This has, apparently, become apparent with the introduction of domestic violence legislation in 2010, and the challenges of integrating this legislation with the delivery of traditional law. But the overwhelming message of the report was that violence against women must be understood as a symptom of the women s economic and social disadvantage. These are huge challenges in Timor-Leste, still one of the world s poorest countries. Which brings us back directly to the work of the Working Women s Centres, supporting women to get into and stay in work, and to the Clearinghouse work on the stopping women losing their jobs as a result of domestic violence .

Final thoughts It took us 35 years in Australia of working on the issue of domestic violence to make the link between the workplace and the power of unions to win domestic violence rights. While I understand that our countries are very different, I would argue that domestic violence working rights should be on the agenda from the start. Don t wait as long as we did. I would also suggest that are lessons to be learnt from the 35 years of Australian experience, learn from our mistakes and leap frog over some of our systems.

General References Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006, Personal Safety Survey, Australia 2005, reissue, cat. no. 4906.0, ABS, Canberra Murray, S & Powell, A 2008, Working it out: domestic violence issues and the workplace, Issue Paper, Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse, Sydney O Leary-Kelly, A, Reeves, C & Lean, E 2008, Coming into the light: intimate partner violence and its effects at work, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas Paper references Alves, MDF, Sequerira, IMM, Abrantes, LS, Reis, F 2009 Baseline Sudy on Sexual and Gender- Based Violence in Bononaro and Covalima, Asia Pacific Support Collective Timor-Leste Franzway, S, Zufferey, C & Chung, D 2007, 'Domestic violence and women's employment', paper presented to Our Work, Our Lives 2007: National Conference on Women and Industrial Relations, Adelaide, viewed 19 January 2009, http://www.sapo.org.au/pub/pub12343.html Hynes, M & Ward J et al. 2003, A Determination of the Prevalence of Gender Based Violence Among ConflictAffected Populations in East Timor, Report to the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Reproductive Health and The International Rescue Committee. Cited in Violence Against Women in Melanesia and East Timor. National Statistics Directorate (NSD) [Timor-Leste], Ministry of Finance [Timor-Leste], and ICF Macro. 2010. Timor-Leste Demographic and Health Survey 2009-10. Dili, Timor-Leste: NSD [Timor-Leste] and ICF Macro.

Office of Development Effectiveness, 2008, Violence Against Women in Melanesia and East Timor, building on global and regional promising approaches, AusAid, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.

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> 1 in 5 married women is afraid of her partner. > 1 in 4 women had been physically assaulted by her partner during the previous 12 months. > 1 in 10 women had been beaten while pregnant and half of these experienced a negative pregnancy outcome. > 16% of married women reported sexual coercion by their husbands during the previous 12 months.