
Issue No 45		10 March 2000

The Soapbox

Jennie George's Final Sign-Off

In her farewell address, the outgoing ACTU President argues creeping casualisation is the new form of systemic discrimination against women


	Logging Off!

One of the most dramatic labour market developments over the past decade has been the growing numbers and growing workforce share for casual employees.

Today 26% of workers are casually employed with almost 2 million workers in that category.

Casual employment arrangements have become 'typical' of the new jobs being created over the course of the 1990s. The "permanent casual" - a misnomer if ever, is on the increase.

These are not casuals in the sense of being employed short term or irregularly but not permanents either, as the employees in question do not have access to standard award entitlements.

These developments are having marked negative impacts on women at work, for they are disproportionately represented in casual employment, with high rates of casualisation in feminised industries.

Take for example the area of accommodation, cafes and restaurants with a staggering casual density of 56%: cultural and recreation services with a density of 47% and retail around 46%.

32% (1 in 3) of employed women are employed on a casual basis. Women comprise 55% of all casuals with the overwhelming majority working part time.

And yet among these part time casuals 59% of women have been with their current employer for more than 12 months. These long periods of casual employment are even more prevalent among full time casual employees.

What is their plight at work?

At best they will be receiving an hourly loading which can only partially compensate for entitlements and benefits foregone.

But as we know, many casuals don't get the loading because award enforcement is so lax, particularly in small business and small workplaces.

And now, with the increasing trend to deregulate the labour market there are growing numbers of workers, particularly young people and women who are on individual contracts or informal arrangements. These workers, outside the scope of regulation, are at the behest of their employers in regard to their wages and conditions of employment.

It has been argued by some commentators that the award system has itself become a vehicle for the legitimisation of casual employment.

How can this be so?

Because award provisions generally for casuals are oriented not towards providing protection and benefits but rather towards sanctioning their demise by way of an hourly loading.

Existing Award regulation (or lack of it) allows a much wider variety of employees to be designated 'casual' extending well beyond the group of workers - those who are true casuals employed short term or irregularly.

The prominence of women among the ranks of low paid and insecure casual workers is the result of a labour market that operates in a specifically gendered way.

Casual work is no longer a peripheral element of organisational strategy (what we once described as the cover/periphery model) but increasingly a central component of how firms organise their workplaces. So many casual jobs are now effectively permanent and ongoing.

The existing regulatory framework is indirectly and systematically discriminating against women because it inadequately protects a form of employment in which women are disproportionately represented.

They receive few entitlements, lower and more volatile earnings and poor access to training and career paths.

For feminists and union women activists we need to appreciate that many of the gains we fought for and won over the last decades are being denied to growing numbers of women at work.

Important entitlements like equal pay, maternity leave, parental and carers leave, annual and sick leave and superannuation are all at risk for these women.

The Challenges

The challenges are several fold:

- To re-regulate casual employment

- To ensure that casual employees are truly casual and do receive a loading in lieu of non wage employment entitlements

- To consider appropriate Award and legislative responses

- To understand the growth in casual employment and its implications and future trends in an increasingly de-regulated labour market.

- To appreciate that young people have experienced a dramatic rise in casual employment (much of it not voluntarily accepted). Today 59% of 16-19 year olds are casual and 26% of 20-24 year olds.

- To focus on how we as a union movement recruit and extend membership coverage among casual employees. Currently it is at a low 11%. Our future is increasingly located among the precariously employed.

In conclusion

Women unionists of today and tomorrow will conduct their work and struggles in a workplace and economy so different from mine when I first became involved almost 30 years ago.

Then 50% of workers were in unions, and full time permanent employment the norm.

Then the centralised system of conciliation and arbitration and awards provided the vehicles through which major gains were achieved for women workers. Equal pay, maternity leave, carers leave, and superannuation to name a few.

Over 1 million women work as casuals. The great majority of them are part time and without access to the employment benefits that women of my generation fought for.

In an increasingly deregulated labour market underpinned by precarious forms of employment the challenges for you are many.

The solutions will of necessity be different.

They will require different organisational responses and structural accommodations.

But I'm confident that unionism will survive and that you, particularly the talented and capable young women in our ranks, will continue to fight the good fight in the decades ahead.

Women need unions and unions need women.

I thank you all for your support - especially my friends, family and my mother.

You know I'll always be there in spirit with you.

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Issue 45 contents

Interview: Working Women
Nareen Young talks about how services are being delivered to our most vulnerable workers - and what unions need to do to make them their own.

Unions: Into the New Frontier
IT professionals are part of the new workforce that unions need to win over - and while they are often contractors, they're workers too.

History: Handling The Ladies
1943 - women were filling the gap in the workforce left by the diggers abroad and Australian managers needed some advice on how to deal with these strange creatures.

Technology: Building The Hypermacho Man
In a stinging critque of the �Wired� culture, Melanie Stewart Miller argues digital cultural is creating a new super-Man.

International: The Long March Home
Trade union women round the world used International Women�s Day to launch the World March of Women Against Poverty and Violence.

Satire: Kerosene Dilution Racket
The nursing home industry has been rocked by a new scandal with the revelation that some unscrupulous proprietors have been diluting their patients� kerosene baths with illicit liquids.

Review: Power and the Back Bar
In an upcoming book, Julia Gillard argues the ALP retains a male culture that is fast losing step with contemporary society.

» Services Threatened Over Olympic Bonus

» Games Edict: Dance for Free

» Revealed: Secret State Transit Corporatisation Plans

» Women Demand Better Pay from Faye

» Telstra, Banks Whack Rural Australia

» Casuals Inquiry Still On Union Agenda

» Shaw, Sams Pay Tribute to John Whelan

» Teachers� Website Mysteriously Blocked

» Cash Bonus for Bilingual Workers

» Women Demand Better Pay from Faye

» Shareholders Push Global Action

» Fair Wear Conquers Schools

» TWU Calls on Workers to Steer Clear of Woolworths

» Push to Strike Out Parrish Directors