Casual employment figures look relatively healthy from the outside, but the hard truth is that people on lower incomes are also those with the least access to benefits such as sick leave and job security. In fact, 65 per cent of hospitality workers receive no paid entitlements. 

By JASON WALLS

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ most recent employee earnings and benefits survey – published in June – paints a relatively rosy picture of the rate of casualisation of Australia’s workforce over the past decade.

In its summary of findings, the ABS reassures us that rather than increasing, the percentage of workers not receiving paid entitlements (for example, sick leave and holiday pay) has actually fallen since 2003, and “has remained at around 24 per cent every August for the last nine years”.

But a closer look at the numbers tells a different story.

The good news is that if you earn between $800 and $1600 a week (before tax) you are only 1.5 per cent more likely to be employed on a casual basis than you were 10 years ago, with permanent employment among this group at almost 90 per cent.

And if you’re lucky enough to take home any more than that each week the news is even better, with just 7 per cent of workers in that income bracket employed on a casual basis, down from 12 per cent in 2003.

So far, so good – the majority of Australian workers earn more than $40,000 a year and of those, more than 90 per cent enjoy secure employment.

But the reverse angle of this statistic is that nearly half of the remaining 38 per cent of workers – the working poor – are employed on a casual basis, with no access to sick leave and no guarantee of ongoing employment.

And it gets worse, while high income earners have benefited from decreased casualisation rates, for those on lower incomes the trend is reversed.

For those earning $30,000 a year or less, the figure rises to over 60 per cent (up by a third), and for the lowest paid workers – those earning less than $400 a week – it’s nearly 75 per cent (a 10th higher than in 2003).

Former director of research at Monash University’s Department of Management Prof Greg Bamber says this increasing casualisation represents a “vicious cycle” for low-paid workers, who have few rights and can be let go at any moment with no redundancy payout to soften the blow.

“One of the problems that casual workers experience is that the employer might send them home if they find that they're not very busy,” Prof Bamber said.

“They can simply terminate the arrangement without giving much notice, or any notice at all.”

This is a daily reality for Helen*, 20, who is working her way through university by pulling beers at a local pub.

“They never actually fire you, they just stop giving you shifts, and you have to actually ask them, 'what's happened?',” she said.

“There is that risk they could drop me and it would be so unexpected and I'd have nothing to live off until I found new work.”

The industry Helen works in, hospitality, employs by far the highest percentage of casual workers, with two-thirds of the workforce receiving no paid entitlements.

The sector also has one of the lowest rates of union membership, down by nearly half to less than 5 per cent, which Prof Bamber says is no coincidence.

“Casual workers are difficult for unions to organise because they are here today and gone tomorrow and they don't have a strong attachment to a particular employer or a particular job,” he said.

“When workforces are not represented by unions then there's no one to bargain for them or engage in negotiations on their behalf and that tends to mean that they get lower levels of wages.”

ACTU President Ged Kearney agrees, saying insecure work “makes it harder for workers to speak up about issues like health, safety and bullying in the workplace”.

But Ms Kearney is confident casual workers do understand the benefits of union membership, which “remains as relevant to Australian workers as at any time in history”.

“Most Australian workers understand the benefits they gain at work as a result of unions, whether they are members or not, and would join if they were freely able to,” she said.

But 19-year-old Barbara*, who works at a fast food restaurant in Burwood and earns $12 an hour – even on public holidays,  is not convinced.

“If you're sick, you have to get someone else to cover your shift, and if you can't, you have to work it. We had a girl last week who had to come in with tonsillitis and work for eight hours,” she said.

“I think you start to feel after a while like you're being a bit exploited and it does make you resent a place that you'd otherwise [enjoy].”

Despite her dissatisfaction with her pay and conditions, Barbara has never considered joining a union.

“I mean, what has the hospitality union really ever done for hospitality? Seriously, if your minimum pay as an 18-year-old is $12 an hour every day and you have no guaranteed shifts and if you're going to have to pay to join a union, I feel like they should at least offer some benefit,” she said.

*Names have been changed.