April 2000 Volume 81 Number 4 "serving the protectors"
Opinion
By Bernadette Zimmermann

To Retain Women Employees

A recent newspaper article, Chief wants women to be a police force (The Advertiser, March 9, 2000), reported that Commissioner Mal Hyde has pledged to improve the participation rate of women in policing.

The report indicated that SAPOL wants more women officers to be employed - and stay employed - in SAPOL. But decades of research and anecdotal evidence has already been dumped into the laps of successive commissioners over quite some time. The research available has included a multitude of strategies that would assist employers like SAPOL to retain its women employees. SAPOL management had a chance to reveal its understanding of those strategies during the negotiations that led to the 1998 enterprise agreement.

During those negotiations, a claim for paid maternity leave was made by the Police Association of South Australia on behalf of its 600 or so women members. At the time, SA and WA were the only remaining states in Australia that denied its women police their income upon taking maternity leave while remaining a member of the service. Those negotiations and the resulting government policy are an embarrassment. We achieved a paltry two weeks off with pay. Victoria offers women police 12 weeks leave with pay!

And that is just one example. We are also the only state in the country that does not have a pregnancy policy. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if we might also be the only state that does not have an equity/diversity policy, or a policy on what one is supposed to do when bullying becomes a feature of the workplace. It would be fair to suggest that when serious issues such as these are left unattended, many employees - women and men - opt to quit.

The Advertiser reported that:

He (Commissioner Hyde) said the action plan being developed looked at boosting the number of female recruits and reducing the number of women officers who quit...

It is hoped the action plan being developed by SAPOL might find something in common with the one already developed by the Police Association some years ago (after much consultation with its women members).

I noted with interest that The Advertiser also reported:

Mr Hyde said South Australia had taken the lead in 1915 - when it was the first Australian State to employ women police officers - and now must ensure it did not lag behind.

Isn’t it that we have already? It’s been a long time since 1915.

But all is not necessarily lost. The next round of enterprise bargaining is looming. SAPOL management has the chance to reveal any new understanding of these strategies in the enterprise agreement that follows.

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