I'd show how they must make trade-offs of how much food they purchase vs. how much they send on heating and utilities. They are barely making ends meet and I would show this from a very personal standpoint. Lastly, I would show that the existing Fair Work Act only covers the higher end of the Australian industrial relations system and does not provide enough support and protection for the part-time workers in the country, the majority of which are women. The final section of the representation would be a series of recommendations for making the Act more realistic. What would you define as an interest (at least two), and what as possible positions to these interests?

The first interest and one I would be passionate about is how all these economics that border on discrimination are affecting the next generation of Australians. The short-changing of women in the workplace, many of them having to take only part-time jobs due to their commitments to their children, are being short-changing for the time they invest in their jobs. The result is that the children these women are struggling to support financially get less of their time and their mothers aren't getting the pay they deserve. The net effects is the children end up getting short-changed and often miss out on opportunities to make the most of their lives. Too often companies and governments look at the first level only of the analysis, when in fact the...

The pay gap often creates an exceptional stress on the children of mothers who work part-time or full-time to support their families (Watson, 2010).
Second, the interest is on breaking the cycle of women who often follow their parents into part-time work and not having a chance to break out and gain a greater level of income through more education. The Fair Work Act does not allow for part-time workers, regardless of gender, to successfully bargain for greater wages (Baird, Cooper, Ellem, 2009). In fact, the opposite is true of collective bargaining; often it backfires and does not provide part-time workers with any voice whatsoever in negotiating with their employers. This second interest needs to move away from concentrating purely on bargaining for wage and salaries at the higher levels of the industrial relation systems to be inclusive.

References

Baird, M., Cooper, R., & Ellem, B.. (2009). Low-paid women: the impact of regulatory change in Australia. Industrial Relations Journal, 40(5), 393-407.

Jefferson, T., & Preston, A.. (2010). Australia's Other Two-Speed Economy: Gender, Employment and Earnings in the Slow Lane. Australian Bulletin of Labour, 36(3), 327-334.

Watson, I.. (2010). Decomposing the Gender Pay Gap in the Australian Managerial Labour Market. Australian Journal of Labour…