Insecure work & the war on wages a devastating double

As we approach the next federal election, you’ll hear a lot about the war on wages taking place in Australia.

Australians suffered their biggest real wage cut in more than two decades in 2021, hot on the heels of eight years of record low wages growth.

COVID-19 border restrictions plugged the flow of cheap temporary migrant labour for almost two years, in turn driving down unemployment well below the rate which many economists thought would trigger wages growth.

Now those economists are stumped as to why wages haven’t magically started rising again.

The answer can be found in the work of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security, which for the last 15 months has heard from workers across the country and every corner of the economy.

The Committee’s Job Insecurity Report released last month concludes that rising job insecurity is a fundamental cause of the wages crisis plaguing Australia.

The evidence of skyrocketing job insecurity is plain to see. Australia has among the highest rates of casual employment in the OECD, and the number of Australians forced to work multiple jobs to get by recently hit a new record high.

Pair that with massive increases in parttime, fixed-term, labour hire and gig work, and you have a workforce that in 2018 for the first time ever, had less than 50 per cent of people in permanent full-time employment with leave entitlements.

What is most disappointing is the rates of job insecurity in industries funded by Federal and State Governments, such as aged care where 9 in 10 workers are casual or part-time, or in disability care, schools, the public service and the NBN.

Another of those sectors is of course higher education, where two thirds of university employees are now on casual or fixed-term contracts.

However as NTEU President Dr Alison Barnes told the Committee, these jobs are not genuinely casual or short-term in nature.

'The majority of work performed by staff employed on casual and fixed term contracts is needed on an ongoing basis – and it is standard practice in the sector for employers to employ the same casual and fixed term employees on new, precarious contracts every year or semester, to perform the same work in perpetuity,' Dr Barnes said.

The proportion of university staff in these precarious employment arrangements has been steadily rising for two decades, and the impact it is having on workers, students and our national research capability is diabolical.

The inquiry heard from the NTEU, workers at the Universities of Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, and Wollongong, and Australian Catholic University, and management at the Universities of Melbourne and Newcastle.

Last month, Dr James Stratford from the University of Melbourne told the Committee he has been stuck in casual employment at the University since 2000.

After 22 years, a PhD and two masters degrees, Dr Stratford remains a casual even while clocking up 47.5 working hours per week during semesters.

'One of the most serious effects is that of mental health and wellbeing. Chronic insecurity breeds chronic anxiety, and this constant insecurity also fosters a culture of fear,' he told us.

Dr Stratford’s story is far from unique, but the Morrison Government’s only response to the insecure work crisis has been to introduce a toothless casual conversion provision, that in many cases is less effective than existing conversion provisions in Awards and Enterprise Agreements. The results of the casual conversion laws have been particularly farcical in the university sector. As NTEU NSW Secretary Dr Damien Cahill explained:

'We got data from around 19 universities. What that showed is that, of all of the casuals who were assessed for conversion under the obligations of the Fair Work Act, only about two per cent of them were converted,' Dr Cahill said.

Brazenly, the University of Sydney sent a generic email refusing conversion to 4,000 casual staff, while the University of Newcastle sent an identical form letter to almost 2,300 casual staff.

The evidence presented to the Committee clearly set out the damage job insecurity is doing to the financial and mental wellbeing of university staff, but also the impacts it has on academic freedom and the quality of both teaching and research work.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

As an industry funded largely through federal funding, a Government actually interested in the wellbeing and sustainability of our universities could require, as a condition of that funding, that the workforce is secure and fairly paid.

That is just one of many recommendations made in the Job Insecurity Report aimed at providing casual and fixed-term staff with a genuine opportunity for a permanent job, paid leave entitlements, and protection from wage theft.

The Morrison Government’s kneejerk response to that report has been to dismiss the issue of job insecurity entirely, in the same fashion it has regularly dismissed the critical role of universities in Australian society over the last nine years.

Change will not come until we change the Government. ◆

Senator Tony Sheldon (Labor, NSW) is Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security