Work family conflict in the workplace: Manifestations and disputes

Drawing on discrimination complaints lodged with the Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission, the paper explores workplace manifestations of work/family conflict. I argue that the employee and employer understandings of such conflict are profoundly influenced by workplace norms and by the broader industrial context. Further, any outcomes of the complaint handing process in anti-discrimination fora are typically restricted to the individual complainant, without precedent value in the relevant industry or even in the particular workplace where the complaint arose. While the industrial relations jurisdiction has offered an alternative forum for work/family disputes, radical changes to Australia’s industrial relations system will see many such disputes pushed into anti-discrimination fora. The reduced power of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to arbitrate not only limits an alternative forum for work family complaints, but is also likely to influence understandings of work/family conflict both in the workplace and in the anti-discrimination jurisdiction