Publications
A Casual Discussion: Happy being casual
OCCASIONAL PAPER
The campaign to curb the growth of casual employment currently being waged in some sections of the labour movement relies on shaky evidence.
Unions claim that casual employees suffer from greater insecurity and economic stress due to irregular hours of work and lower earnings than their permanent counterparts. One way to improve the conditions of casual employment, it is argued, is to entitle casual employees to convert to permanent employment after six months with the same employer.
Casual employment appears to have grown, however, due in part to the needs of many working-age individuals for more flexible arrangements than those offered by permanent employment. These include people who have major non-work commitments. In 2001, for example, 28% of casual employees were studying full-time while 17% were women with dependent children. Also reported have been cases where employers had to offer diverse forms of engagement, including casual positions, to attract and retain employees.
Survey findings indicate that casual employees are just as satisfied with various aspects of their jobs as permanent employees, including pay. Casual employees' average earnings in 2001 ($16.45 per hour) were certainly lower than those of permanent employees ($19.80 per hour). Casual employees nevertheless tended to indicate that they were being paid fairly. This is due probably to the fact that many of them were relatively less skilled and less educated. More than 42% had no post-school qualifications, and about the same proportion was in low-skilled occupations.
Under the federal Metal, Engineering and Associated Industries Award, casual employees have had the right since 2001 to convert after six months to permanent employment. According to one source, not a single casual employee had chosen to do so as of April 2002. They saw no immediate benefit in having paid annual leave, sick leave and public holidays. They preferred the extra pay from casual loadings and the flexibility of casual employment arrangements.
So casualisation is not a pressing concern for the majority of the workforce.
The real problem with the casuals campaign is that, if successful, it would end up increasing unemployment. The prospect of having to convert casual positions to permanent positions after six months is a disincentive to hiring.
The more regulation is imposed on employment, the more jobs are destroyed. Evidence indicates that unfair dismissal laws discourage many employers from taking on permanent employees. Some employers try to avoid potentially costly and cumbersome unfair dismissal allegations by hiring casual employees instead, because the latter are to some extent exempt from unfair dismissal provisions. But now the unions want to close off this avenue as well.
Casual employment can serve as a stepping stone to other jobs. This is particularly pertinent to the less educated, who are likely to experience difficulty moving from unemployment directly into permanent employment. Landing a casual job, however, brings them relatively closer to permanent opportunities. The longer the time spent in casual employment, the greater the probability of transition to permanent employment. This points to the importance of experience and a network of contacts acquired through casual work.
Regulating casual employment is tantamount to depriving disadvantaged jobseekers of opportunities.
Why, then, are the unions pursuing these campaigns?
The answer is in part that casualisation poses a direct threat to unions. Casual employees are difficult to organise. For many of them, work is not a central life activity, and union membership is not particularly attractive. The larger the casual workforce, the less relevant unions become. One thing that union leaders can do to minimise the damage is reduce the casual workforce by imposing uniform rules.
There are, of course, some workers who have trouble moving from casual into permanent employment. But introducing blanket regulations to cater for the needs of this minority would also affect the majority who are currently satisfied with their casual employment arrangements by destroying their jobs.
A less heavy-handed approach is necessary. Unions must, above all, recognise how their anti-casualisation campaign is doing more harm than good to the most disadvantaged sections of the workforce, for whom they claim to speak.