17
The report of the Independent Inquiry into Insecure Work in Australia
Working time insecurity is also experienced in the form of excessive hours. Australia outranks 22 OECD countries for the average hours worked by full time workers.21 Extremely long working hours (50 hours or more per week) have become increasingly common for full-time workers, especially among males. In 2011, over 1.8 million workers (15.9% of all employed persons) report usually working 50 hours or more a week. This includes 22.9% of male workers (1.4 million workers)
Where is insecure work growing?
and 7.5% of female workers (391,900 workers).22 Research
To an extent, the growth of these jobs has taken place under
conducted by the Workplace Research Centre at the University
the radar. It is surprising that there has been no thorough
of Sydney has also found that found that a pervasive long-
public inquiry into the effects of a trend which sees 40% of the
hours culture exists in Australian workplaces. According
workforce in non-permanent forms of employment, and sees a
to ABS data, around 60% of full time employees who usually
quarter of employees with no entitlement to sick leave or paid
worked very long hours would prefer to work fewer hours.
leave.
One in five of Australian workers (21% or 2.2. million) would prefer to work fewer hours.23
Indeed, while there are more jobs in our economy than ever before they are not the secure, full-time jobs that existed a
A further group of insecure workers are those that experience fluctuating pay/ income. There are two main causes of
generation ago. We saw evidence of this right across the economy:
unpredictable pay. The first is through working irregular hours: this is interwoven with working time insecurity above.
›› In every city and town we visited we met school teachers,
The second main cause of income insecurity is where workers
TAFE teachers and university staff who were employed
have a significant proportion of their pay at risk, in terms of
on a casual basis or on fixed-term contracts. Their stories
being contingent upon individual, group or organisational
were backed up by research provided to the Inquiry which
performance. While the extent of variable pay is difficult
shows that the number of casual employees in Australian
to determine in Australia, ABS data indicates that 25% of
universities has increased by 81% since 1996, and
employees have earnings/income that varies from one pay
employees on fixed-term contracts has increased by 47%
period to the next. This includes 19% of employees working full-
over the same period.25 We saw similar trends in primary
time hours and 41% of employees working part-time hours.
and secondary education – in Victoria, 58 % of teachers in
24
Figure 3: Growth in non-standard forms of employment, 1992 – 2009, Base Index = 100 FT Paid leave
FT Casual
PT Paid leave
PT Casual
Self-employed
250
schools are on short-term contracts, mostly for 12 months or less. What was once seen as a life-long vocation at the end of years of tertiary study is now treated by the Government as a
200
temporary job.
150 100 50 0
the first five years of teaching in State
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Source: ABS, Labour Market Statistics, Cat 6105.0. Self-employed are owner managers of incorporated and unincorporated enterprises