The Australian Greens’ dissenting report
Introduction
1. People
are under growing pressure because of job insecurity. People are unable to make
big decisions - like starting a family or buying a house - because they don’t
know if they’ll have a job from year to year, or even from month to month. Job
insecurity affects people’s health, welfare and the lives of those close to
them.
2. We
are now in a position in which one in four employees in this country does not
enjoy paid leave. That is a national shame.
3. Despite
the overwhelming evidence of the growing problem of job insecurity in
Australia, governments have shamefully failed to act.
4. This
is the first legislative attempt to tackle the problem of job insecurity. It
won’t solve the problem alone, but it will be an essential first step.
5. This
Greens’ Bill received the support of a wide range of unions and community organisations
and should be passed.
6. Passing
this Bill will mean that millions of Australians trapped in insecure work will
have a pathway to secure employment. It will mean that a mother who needs to look
after a sick child will have a right to take personal leave. It will mean that
a contract teacher who works year after year to teach our children will finally
be able to apply for a mortgage. It will mean that a temporary worker who is
stuck in an endless cycle of labour hire will have an opportunity for more
certainty.
7. We
want an economy that serves the people; not the other way around. We must
remember that the economy is a tool that we invented. If the economy is not
delivering the outcomes we want, making us happy, safe, healthy, better
educated and fulfilled, then it is time that our economy changed.
Rationale for change
8. There
has been a growing trend towards insecure work in Australia, where a staggering
number of casuals, and people on rolling contracts, now make up our workforce.
Around 2.2 million employees are not entitled to paid holiday or sick leave and
have no guarantee of ongoing secure employment. We are often told that this is
because business needs flexibility, but this trend is symptomatic of what can
start to happen if we let markets become our masters and when financial risk,
in an increasingly uncertain world, is transferred away from companies and onto
workers—because that is what has happened in Australia over the last couple of decades.
9. The
growth of the casual workforce from around 15 per cent in the 1980s to around a
quarter of all employees now is part of the phenomenon that was articulated in
the 2010 report, Shifting risk—work and working life in Australia, produced by
the Workplace Research Centre. They observed that people are now required to
absorb more and more financial, social and economic risks and therefore
experience much more financial and social stress. The landmark inquiry report
from a previous Deputy Prime Minister, Brian Howe, Lives on Hold, that was
released by the ACTU in May 2012, builds on this and gave voice to many of
those who are trapped in the cycle of insecure work, which often robs them of
the ability to make long-term decisions and plans about their lives.
10. There is a place for casual
labour in the workforce. It can be used to address genuine business needs, and
it can be beneficial for people who only want short-term employment with higher
rates to compensate for the lack of tenure. It can be a win-win arrangement.
But that is not always the case. In 2007 over half of all casual employees
reported that they would prefer not to work on a casual basis. Most of these
would prefer to have both paid holiday leave and sick leave, even taking into
account the effect that this might have on their income. Over half of all
casuals have been employed in their current jobs for over a year, and over 15
per cent of casuals have been in their jobs for more than five years.
11. In addition to casuals,
there are also a significant number of people on fixed-term contracts and
rolling fixed-term contracts. In 2011 there were almost 400,000 people—just
over four per cent of all employees—engaged in this form of insecure work. But
it is worth noting that these arrangements are heavily concentrated in
education, with 15 per cent of the workforce on fixed-term contracts. This
means that education alone accounts for almost a third of all employees on
fixed-term contracts in Australia. These are the people who are teaching our kids
and are bringing up the rest of us through secondary schools and universities,
and over a third of all employees on fixed-term contracts are found in
education.
Evidence
12. A wide range of trade unions
and community organisations supported the Bill and/or the principles underlying
the Bill. Many urged that we go further.
13. The Australian Education
Union said:
the AEU supports the Bill while recognising it as but an
initial legislative response and more will be required to effectively address
the unacceptable incidence and increasing rise of insecure work in Australia[1]
14. The National
Tertiary Education Union said:
NTEU supports the Fair Work Amendment (Tackling Job
Insecurity) Bill 2012.[2]
15. The Queensland
Nurses Union submitted:
We agree with the proposed amendments to the Fair Work Act
2009 (the Act) that seek to provide insecure workers with a process for moving
onto permanent employment on either a part-time or full-time basis.[3]
16. According to the
ACTU, the Bill should go further:
While (subject to the amendments proposed below) the ACTU
supports the Fair Work Amendment (Tackling Job Insecurity) Bill 2012, we
believe it is insufficient on its own to effectively begin to address the
issues associated with insecure work.[4]
17. Likewise, the
Australian Institute of Employment Rights wanted the Bill to be passed and
further action taken:
AIER is supportive of the Bill as a first step in a process
towards limiting job insecurity within Australia. We do, however, make some
suggestions about how the Bill can be amended so that it better achieves it’s
objective.[5]
18. The Australian Manufacturing
Workers’ Union wanted the Bill passed and improved:
The AMWU therefore welcomes the efforts made in the Bill to
legislate and strengthen a right to request conversion to more permanent
employment for both casual employees and “rolling contract” employees.
The AMWU particularly welcomes the ability of the Fair Work
Commission, under the Bill, to make orders for secure employment. [6]
19. The St Vincent de Paul
Society considered that the Bill would improve society’s welfare:
The Society supports the purpose of the Bill. … we support
this Bill.[7]
20. The Federation of Ethnic
Communities Councils also supported the Bill:
In the first instance, FECCA commends the Bill for its
considered approach[8]
21. In hearings before the
Committee, there was powerful evidence of the real impact of insecure work. Ms Sharnee
Chan said:
I have been a casual since 2003, so it has been 10 years. I
am not a casual by choice. It is just that if you are an academic in a
university and you are an early-career academic there are no ongoing jobs. All
the teaching is done by casuals. Being a casual is not something that gives me
flexibility to balance work and family. Rather, I have had to make my whole
life flexible in order to meet the demands of casual work, which can mean
intermittent demand for your work. You have to be there. You cannot turn down
any work, because you never know when the work might run out.
Teaching contracts are for 13 weeks and research jobs are not
contracted; you are a casual—so you are hired hour to hour. I have been at UNSW
since 2005. So, sometimes you will get assigned to a project and that could be
for 25 hours of work. Other times you might be on a longer-term project. That
project might be for three or four years and you might get assigned to it for a
period but you do not know how long you are going to be on that research
project. … I am a workforce researcher, so I am part of the workforce unit, and
when projects come in that require my skills, which is [inaudible] then I go in
an perform those roles. So I am not replacing anyone in any way; I am just a
staff member who works alongside and in the same way as the fixed-term
employees do, but I just have a different contractual basis.
My partner has been in casual work for the past eight years.
We have recently decided that despite the insecurity we would get married. But
we cannot imagine how we could possibly have children or raise a family when we
do not have work for a period of time. I am in my thirties, so that is
something that has been core in my decision to try to work my way out of the sector.
I have moved 100 kilometres away from my family and friends,
because it is very hard to find stable accommodation when you cannot prove to
real estate agents that you have ongoing income. I have lived in bizarre
situation. I have lived on the balcony of a home of a man who was bed-ridden.
Because you are insecure at work and you are desperate for accommodation you
end up being exploited in other ways. I ended up being a default carer for this
man and performing bowel care and attending to him in the night.
I feel trapped. After 10 years I do not have a career to
speak of and I do not have a family. I spent a decade training and building up
research experience and a research profile. I feel like I have done all the
right things, and at the same time there is high demand for my work. However,
it is always on casual contracts, so I live my whole life in tiny parcels of
time. I am really committed to my work and I think the work I do is important.
It is just completely unsustainable.[9]
22. The National Tertiary Education
Union also highlighted the disproportionately high incidence of insecure
employment in the tertiary sector:
I think most people would not anticipate that casual
employment in particular, as well as fixed-term unemployment, is overwhelmingly
the dominant form of employment in the university sector. I think most people's
present vision of the sector would still assume tenured professors and all of
the associated cultural trappings that go with that. Nothing really could be
further from the truth in the contemporary university environment.
Before going to the specifics of one or two elements of the
bill, which we would commend, I have a couple of overview observations. If you
looked at the university system 20 years ago, you had a student-to-staff ratio
of about 12 to one, but that was measuring a direct full-time labour force.
Today, it is 22 to one on average, but it can be as high as 100 to one in some
instances. At the same time, the size of the casual labour force has increased
almost fourfold so that now the majority of undergraduate teaching is carried
out by casual academic labour. To give you an idea of the scale of that, there
are about 200,000 employees in the sector, and of that 70,000 are in some kind
of permanent standard employment arrangement, 45,000 are on fixed-term
contracts of three years duration or less, and fully the balance, which is
close to 70,000, is in casual hourly-paid employment.[10]
Conclusion
23. The submissions to the
committee support the published research and demonstrate the need to act.
24. The trend towards insecure
work is by no means inevitable. Many other OECD economies have experienced similar
structural economic changes and dynamics as Australia but do not have the same
levels of insecure work. Only Spain has a higher rate of insecure work than
Australia. Spain has one in three workers in temporary employment because of a
large seasonal rural workforce. The Greens and the ILO believe that the
casualisation of the workforce can have widespread damaging impacts on society,
leaving workers and communities in unstable and insecure situations, disrupting
their life-planning options. If we can provide secure jobs then we should
provide secure jobs.
25. So we have a clear choice.
Continue down the path towards an American-style economy and jobs market of
insecurity and precariousness or have the courage to pursue reforms that will
rebalance the labour market in favour of permanence and jobs security.
26. In light of the broad range
of support for this Bill and the principles behind it, it is disappointing that
the old parties, especially Labor, lack the courage to tackle job insecurity.
Recommendation 1 |
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That the House of Representatives pass the Bill.
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