‘ONLY A CASUAL…’
How Casual Work Affects Employees, Households and Communities in Australia.
BARBARA POCOCK
ROSSLYN PROSSER
KEN BRIDGE
AUGUST 2004
Labour Studies,
School of Social Sciences,
University of Adelaide,
Adelaide 5005
Generally, a lot of [the permanents] had the same attitude, ‘well you’re just casuals’. I couldn’t tell you the amount of times I had said to me, ‘you’re just a casual’.
(Rachel, 40s, cashier govt/labour hire)
Well I think you are used and abused … I was always under the impression that casual workers were there for overload situations, emergencies, or whatever but I’ve been casual for five years now … ‘We’ll look at that next year’ is the general reply to any request for permanency … So, yeah, I think used and abused is the best description I can come up with.
(Alice, 41, word processor operator, engineering industry)
July 2004
Labour Studies,
School of Social Sciences,
University of Adelaide,
Adelaide,
South Australia, AUSTRALIA,
5005
email:
Phone: 08 83033736
http://www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/socialsciences/people/gls/bpocock.html
Table of Contents
Summary of Report 6
MAIN FINDINGS 6
1. Introduction 18
1.1. Goals of the Study 18
1.2. Funding 19
1.3. Past Research About Casual Workers 19
1.4. Key Policy Questions Arising From the Literature 21
1.5. Methodology 22
2. Do Casual Workers Like Being Casual? 25
2.1 Three Views 25
2.2 What Positive Casuals Say 26
2.3 What Ambivalent Casual Workers Say 30
2.4 What Reluctant Casuals Say 31
2.5 The Difference between Permanent and Casual Employment 35
2.6 Is Casual Work Employee’s Choice? 35
2.7 Being ‘used and abused’ 40
2.8 Love the Job, Don’t love the Terms 44
2.9 Conclusion: Overall Assessments of Casual Work 45
3. Whose Flexibility? 47
3.1 Not All Casuals Want Flexibility: Some Want Steady, Predictable Work 48
3.2 Do Casual Workers Have the Flexibility They Seek? 48
3.3 The Dimensions of Flexibility 58
3.4 Key Characteristics of Flexibility from the Perspective of Employees 67
3.5 The Importance of Predictability: Flexibility for Some, Powerlessness for Others 69
4. The Preference for Permanence 73
4.1 Permanency: The Ideal 76
4.2 The Preference for Permanence Amongst Young People 78
4.3 Requesting Permanency: ‘I begged them’ 78
4.4 ‘There are better ways to work’ 79
4.5 Conclusion: The Strong Preference for Permanence 79
5. Is Casual Work a Pathway to Permanency? 81
5.1 Short term Casual Work as a Pathway to Longer Term Casual Work 81
5.2 For Most, Reliable Ongoing Work is Elusive 82
5.3 A Legal Right To Become Permanent 85
5.4 No Prospect for Permanency: ‘You wait for someone to die for those jobs’ 85
5.5 Locked in the Casual Ghetto? It Doesn’t pay to be Skilled, Experienced and Available 89
5.6 It Doesn’t Pay to Grow Older 91
5.7 It Doesn’t Pay to Speak Up 91
5.8 Conclusion: A Reservoir, Not a Pathway 91
6. Working life: Respect, Performance, Surveillance, Voice 93
6.1 Respect 93
6.2 Work Performance: Do Casuals Work harder? 109
6.3 Surveillance 114
6.4 Voice at Work 115
6.5 The Casual Working Life: Watched, Worked Hard and Out of the Loop 121
7. Working Life: Pay and Conditions 123
7.1 The Down-Side: Low, Unpredictable and Unfair Pay for Casuals 124
7.2 Seven Negative Aspects of Pay for Casual Workers 124
7.3 Paying for Work Expenses 134
7.4 Youth Wages 134
7.5 Financial Planning: Money and Life 135
8. Working Life: Training and Promotion 139
8.1 Training 139
8.2 Promotion: ‘Once you’re a cleaner you’re a cleaner for the rest of your life’ 142
9. Power, Collective Organisation and Unionism 145
9.1 ‘Don’t Rock the Boat’ 149
10. What Happens When You are Sick? 150
10.1 ‘How sick, how injured, how poor?’ 151
10.2 ‘It really puts you in a spin’ 152
10.3 Accommodating Sickness: Working Intensively to Catch Up 153
10.4 Accommodating Sickness: Finding Your Own Replacement 153
11. Having a Holiday: ‘That’d be nice!’ 156
11.1 The Positive Side: Some Can Take a Break When They Want 156
11.2 The Negative Side 157
12. How Does Being Casual Affect Your Health? 162
12.1 ‘I worry: Have I Got Enough Money to Tide Me Over. You Become Withdrawn’ 162
12.2 Health checks 164
12.3 Depression 165
12.4 Work injury 166
12.5 Conclusion: Worry, Rest, and Mental and Physical Health 168
13. Relationships, Social Life and Community 170
13.1 Effects on Individuals: Feeling Demoralised and Disposable 170
13.2 Family: The Effects of Casual Work Transmit to Households 173
13.3 Relationships 177
13.4 Relationship Formation 178
13.5 Living ‘Minute to Minute’: Work before Relationships 179
13.6 Social Life: ‘I’m on the edge of society’ 180
13.7 The Effects On Community Participation 182
13.8 School 182
13.9 Sport 182
14. Welfare, Tax, Superannuation 184
14.1 Unemployment and Casual Work: The Paper Chase 184
15. The Past, The Future and The True Price of Casual Work 190
15.1 The Hidden Productivity Costs of Casual Work 191
15.2 Commitment to the Job 192
15.3 Why do employers use casuals? ‘We are cheap, disposable and convenient’ 192
15.4 Ways in Which Casual Work Could be Managed Better 195
15.5 Casual Work: An Acceptable Price for Being a Mother? 199
15.6 How Casual Work is Remaking Work 199
Appendix 1: Text of invitation to participate in study: 203
Appendix 2: Interview Instrument 204
Appendix 3 Interviewee Portraits 208
Summary of Report
MAIN FINDINGS
· This study reports on the experiences of 55 casual workers. These casual workers were randomly selected from a pool of 136 current or past casual workers who responded to newspaper calls for their participation, to flyers distributed by their employers or in their workplaces or at university, or were drawn from a random sample of members of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association, along with ten names offered by four other unions.
· There are three types of casuals in this study, in terms of overall views of casual work: the positive, the ambivalent and the reluctant.
· The majority are reluctant casuals: sixty-five per cent (or 36 of the 55 interviewed) are negative about being casual. Many are very negative.
· A quarter are – overall – positive about being casual. Most of these are students, younger people or women with dependents. All are part-time. Most have a back up source of income – a partner, parent or pension – and most are at certain stages in their life cycle. While they are positive about being casual now, they did not want to be when they had kids and a mortgage, or they do not want to be when they finish studying.
· Not all students or mature age carers are positive about their casual terms. Two key conditions drive satisfaction: real say over working time through a ‘reciprocal negotiating’ relationship with the employer, and a back up source of income. Often both are present amongst positive casuals.
· While flexibility is often taken as the defining characteristic of casual work, it is far from the only criteria taken into account by casual workers when assessing overall experience.
· The experience of casual work is multi-faceted. Issues affecting overall assessments include flexibility for the worker; predictability of pay and hours; respect, say, training and promotion at work; sick and holiday pay; and impacts on health, home and community.
· Some employees find that being casual gives them flexibility. Twenty-three of those we interviewed – or 42 per cent – feel that they had some flexibility and say over their work patterns. Some value it highly.
· The majority do not have flexibility: 32 or fifty-eight per cent see flexibility as something their employers get, but they do not.
· Flexibility has many dimensions including predictability of ongoing work, days of work, total hours, start and finish times and breaks. Many casuals have surprisingly little capacity to influence these aspects of their casual work, despite the promise of casual flexibility. Many feel on call, more than in charge of their working time.
· Three-quarters of interviewees would prefer to be permanent. Some have tried to become so, without success. Some are in a long-term casual ghetto.
· For many, casual work is not a pathway into permanency.
· A good boss emerges as very important to satisfaction with casual work. A good relationship with this boss is critical to real flexibility for most.
· Depending on a good boss for some employee control and say is seen as a precarious and unreliable means of protection. Many casuals want to see an improved floor of rights, along with their enforcement.
· Many casuals work in fear of dismissal, assuming they do not have rights to contest unfair dismissal. Some do not know when they have been effectively dismissed: they wait for the call for a next shift that does not come.
· The loss of respect and workplace citizenship – voice, communication, training, promotion, inclusion – emerge as very important aspects of casual work for workers.
· Casual pay holds many hazards: for many it is variable by the week, and over the year. It is sometimes accompanied by long gaps, lacks minimum call in times and is drained by work expenses.
· Low hourly rates and under-classification mean that many casuals look to the casual loading to get them to a liveable hourly rate. Their hourly rates are often lower than those they work alongside.
· Three-quarters of interviewees receive the casual loading; a quarter did not or do not know what it is.
· Of those who receive it, seventy-one percent feel that the loading did not adequately compensate for the difference between being casual and being permanent.
· Many casuals go to work sick. When they are sick they weigh up ‘how sick, how injured, and how poor’. Illness is a moment of real hazard, putting health at risk and sometimes ongoing employment when they refuse work. Some do not get a second chance.
· Some casuals can take a holiday when they want and value the flexibility highly. Many others have few holidays because they cannot get away, lack funds, or are fearful of not having a job when they return.
· Casual work sometimes has positive effects on health, but more often it is mentioned as a negative: undermining self-esteem and contributing to worry and stress over money and predictable work. Some are depressed and, at the extreme, have suicidal thoughts.
· Casual workers often do not report injuries or find their hours cut if they do.
· Casual work has effects beyond the individual. It affects children, partners, friendships, households and communities. Planning for events is difficult. In some cases it makes relationship formation difficult.
· Trouble with financial planning, borrowing and saving for retirement are amongst the significant financial costs of casual work.
· Casual work leaches commitment to work and affects productivity as some casuals hang back from expressing their views at work or are excluded from contributing.
· Many casuals would like to see better opportunities for conversion to permanency, access to paid sick and holiday leave, protection from repetitive rolling contracts, better protections from arbitrary dismissal, more respect and better terms for those employed through labour hire.
KEY QUESTIONS ABOUT CASUAL WORK
This study asks – and offers some answers – to five key questions about casual work:
1. Are casuals really ongoing employees? Is true insecurity exaggerated?
It is true that some casuals turn out to be long-term employees under their casual terms. But for many, this is far from permanent work - with equivalent rights - just by another name. For the majority in this study, ongoing casual work is not disguised or de facto permanent work. Long-term casuals feel that they work under second rate terms in their workplaces and the injuries of marginal status and low respect are compounded by low pay, poor conditions and lack of access to basic workplace rights. Formal rights – like rights to pursue unfair dismissal – are far from practical rights in the minds of many long-term casuals. Some lack knowledge of these rights, and many lack the practical power to exercise them.
2. Are casual jobs ‘good’ jobs or ‘bad’ jobs?
Many casuals like their jobs. But this does not make them ‘good’ jobs in their minds. The majority want to change the terms of their employment to permanent conditions, seeing these as superior to the unpredictable terms and lack of true flexibility and say for casuals. In the minds of the majority of those in this study, their casual jobs are not ‘good’ jobs.
3. Do casual jobs meet employee preferences for flexibility?
In some cases, yes - especially for some students and some women with dependents - in particular, those with back-up sources of income and bosses who negotiate with them in a reciprocally flexible relationship. But a majority of those in this study do not feel their jobs are flexible in ways that suit them as employees. Flexibility functions much more for their employers. Where it exists for employees, flexibility is often conferred by the goodwill of local supervisors. They are greatly valued, but this represents a precarious and unstable basis for flexibility for many casuals.
4. Are casual jobs a pathway to better jobs and to ongoing work?
For some this is true, and for others it is irrelevant as their labour market futures lie in other occupations. However, casual work is a dead-end ghetto for many, especially older and more experienced or expensive workers, who are under-priced or ‘out-gunned’ by energetic newcomers from the reservoir of casuals that exists.
5. Are casual terms remaking work environments in Australia?
This question is suggested by this study. The insecurity of casual work drives insecure workplace citizenship for many casuals. It undermines the exercise of their existing rights and makes them very powerless to control critical aspects of their work lives, like working time and pay. In many workplaces they are the ‘shock absorbers’ who absorb the pressure of plans that go wrong, cost-cutting, or overload. The fact that over a quarter of Australian workers now work on these terms has implications for workplaces more generally. A lack of say and insecure work for many casuals means that ongoing workers are also affected where a growing number of their casual workmates have little access to training, feel disrespected, and cannot speak up about injuries or hazards or contribute to work improvements. In this way, a growth in casual work casts a shadow over workplaces more generally, affecting productivity, employers and many ongoing workers.