General

Insecure Work Campaign

SPSF Insecure Work Submission

By David Carey
Federal Secretary (SPSF Group) - CPSU Joint National Secretary

CPSU-SPSF Submission to the Independent Inquiry into Insecure Work

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is facilitating an Inquiry into insecure work, for example working on rolling contracts, as a sham contractor or as a permanent casual.

The inquiry is independent of the ACTU and is being headed by Brian Howe (Former ALP Deputy Prime Minister in the Hawke Government) and Paul Munro (Former Presidential Member of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission). The full 91 page SPSF submission to the Inquiry is available here.

In summary, the evidence presented by the SPSF and its constituent Branches, clearly indicates a growing sector of the Australian workforce is now employed in insecure and non-standard forms of employment. This is also true for employment in the public sector. Over the last few decades relentless restructuring has resulted in public sector workers having less and less access to secure employment. We now have a divided workforce, more and more of whom are denied their fair share of the benefits of an allegedly booming economy.

Beyond the statistics, telling the stories of workers suffering the effects of insecure work is central to the Inquiry process. Some of these stories are told here.

This submission is only one of hundreds to the Inquiry, if you are interested to find out more, then go to the Inquiry’s website here.

The challenge to this Inquiry and to Australian policy makers is to adapt to social and economic change but also enhance working and living conditions of all Australians so that all can share in our economic well being.

___________________________________________________________________________

The roots of insecurity

By adopting the alleged efficiencies of the private sector into the public sector, State Governments, their departments and agencies have abandoned any notions that they should be best practice providers of secure employment. This phenomenon has both culturally and economically eaten away at the broader notion of employment having any stability or predictability attached to it. This was most clearly expressed by Tony Abbott’s comments that a bad job was better than no job at all. With 40% of the workforce in insecure employment his comments would seem to be the current status quo.

Public sector workers are seen as being part of the problem of public sector debt, expenditure and budgets. Decades of budget reductions have seen the shifting of infrastructure debt financing from governments to the private sector, with out sourcing and privatisation of many services part of a toxic bundle of governments’ policies

Part of the role of trade unions is to challenge the status quo when it perpetuates and deepens inequality and also to challenge our traditional ways of thinking about what should constitute secure employment.

For instance, the issue of secure employment has been traditionally associated with full time permanent work 8 ‘til 5, 48 weeks of the year. However we need to broaden security to include non standard employment. We suggest that working less than full time hours should not be insecure – that employer and worker demands for less than full time hours should also include fair pro rata rights enjoyed by securely employed workers.

We suggest that consideration ought also be given to entitlement portability arrangements – similar to those which exist for building workers in various jurisdictions.

We draw attention to the growing participation of women in the workforce and their desire for work which is less than full time hours. However this desire has resulted in workers being marginalised to lower paid positions with inferior rights and entitlements.

We also draw the Inquiry’s attention to legislation, awards and agreements that exacerbate the growth of insecure work forms. We suggest that industrial instruments, modern awards, place too much authority in the hands of employers when an employment contract is made. In modern awards a casual worker is ‘someone engaged as such’. Casual employment must be tightly defined to irregular and non systematic work. That is if you are placed on a work allocation roster you are not employed casually but permanent part time at the minimum. We also suggest that Labor governments, as drafters of awards and agreements, give greater attention to expeditiously removing opting-out clauses and clauses that permit the cashing in or trading off of rights and entitlements.

Long term effects of insecure work

It is of great concern to consider the long term detrimental impact that insecure forms of employment have on a worker’s superannuation and post work life. Casual and non-standard workers are often denied superannuation entitlements. This matter also has dire consequences for women in particular. Women workers have much less superannuation because of their work experiences than men. This has resulted in more women relying on welfare in their later life, having lower superannuation entitlements and less financial and social independence than men.

Another detrimental consequence of insecure work is its impact upon health. A new European paper suggests that ongoing temporary work damages temporary workers’ health. If these findings hold in the Australian context, then the public purse is presumably carrying the burden of these additional health costs, while private sector corporations profit from labour hire and contracting out of public sector work. These effects are another example of privatising profit and socialising losses.

Conclusion

Many workers who once delivered what are generally considered to be public services in secure jobs, now find themselves in the employ of private contractors, often funded by government money. Through this process many workers have lost benefits that were often associated with public sector employment and many of these workers are on short term, insecure contracts with less than full time hours.

Our membership demands that all workers have equal access to the entitlements of secure work, with all public sector employers to play a best practice role in working towards the goal of the maximum possible spread of secure work, especially for those on or below median wages.

___________________________________________________________________________

What you can do!

If you are reading this and want to tell your story of insecure work directly to the Inquiry, please contact your Union Organiser and they will give you more advice on how to tell your story at one of the following locations:

© 2001 Community & Public Sector Union - State Public Services Federation (CPSU-SPSF) - National Office

http://www.cpsu-spsf.asn.au/latest_news/general/20120202_InsecureWork.html
Last Modified: 02 Feb 2012