Welcome to the revolution

Say goodbye to traditional full-time work; today's employer relies increasingly on a more flexible breed of employee.  Stefanie Balogh reports on the shake-up in the way we work

New employment relationships Ø      Fixed-term contracts Used heavily in the public sector for teachers, government administrators and defence staff.  Have same pro-rata benefits and entitlements as full-term employment but lack security. Ø      Casuals Some workers are attracted by casual loadings (in lieu of entitlements such as paid sick leave and holidays) as well as flexible hours.  Employers are driving the growth in casuals with a heavy reliance in the retail trade and hospitality industries. Ø      Part time Permanent part-time workers enjoy full-time entitlements but work fewer hours.  Popular with those wishing to balance work and family. Ø      Contractors These workers are not bound by minimum rates of pay, entitlements, unfair dismissal or superannuation.  They work as contractors for companies and are used in construction, transport, business services and information technology. Ø      Labour hire Three-quarters of workers in labour hire as casuals and only a small minority have access to sick and holiday leave.

Bob Selby has spent half his life mastering nearly every office job in a smallgoods manufacturer on the outskirts of Launceston but now, at 60, finds himself on the wrong side of the factory gates.

Selby and 22 colleagues claim that after the company's original owners went into receivership, they were fired from their full-time jobs and later rehired by a labour hire firm on 12-month traineeships.

"I've been there for 30 years so there wasn't a lot I didn't know," Selby says.  After the training scheme ran out, Selby claims the workers were offered independent contracts through the labour hire firm to work at Blue Ribbon Products for $120 a day without sick leave or holiday pay.

Selby, who belongs to the militant Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union, says he and his mates were locked out of the factory after refusing the contract offer and are fighting for reinstatement.  "I'd sooner have a job but I didn't want to work under those conditions.  I know if I don't get my job back I'm going to find it very hard at my age to get another one," Selby says.

Unions argue the Blue ribbon lockout underscores the changes under way in Australia's labour market.  The traditional model of a full-time worker wedded in a collective employment relationship to one company under a certified award with sick pay, holiday pay and superannuation is being superceded by a new range of flexible and individual employment relationships.

Australia's industrial landscape is littered with part-time workers, casuals, people on short-term contracts, dependent contractors, subcontractors, workers on individual common law employment contracts or Australian Workplace Agreements.

Unions Tasmania secretary Lynne Fitzgerald says the Blue Ribbon case, which is before the Tasmanian Industrial Commission, is "about shirking responsibilities".  Employers argue it illustrates how the heavily unionised meat industry is being forced out of a dinosaur era of industrial regulation.

Blue Ribbon Products director of corporate affair John Fetter says the company has "entered into an arrangement with New Employ and a number of other labour hire firms to promote a level of flexibility in our industry".

"We are all about building best practice within that industry and that is simply what we are doing," Fetter says.

Research by the University of Sydney's Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training and RMIT University, exclusive to The Australian and contained in a report being prepared for the ACTU, suggests that after the 1990-91 recession the recruitment patterns of employers changed dramatically.

"Rather than take on full-time permanent staff, employers increasingly moved towards recruiting casual staff, part-time staff and staff on temporary contracts," the research says.

"Labour-hire grew rapidly in new areas of employment (that is, outside the traditional are of temporary clerical work).  Casual employment accounted for three-quarters of all employment growth during the 1990's."

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures in December 2002 show that most Australian employees, 42 per cent of all workers, are on individually negotiated agreements that include common law contracts and AWAs.  ACIRRT deputy director (research) John Buchanan says there is also a huge growth in casuals working for labour-hire companies, which are temporary worker pools and dependent contractors.  Buchanan says these arrangements give bosses "labour without obligation" because companies are often not responsible for superannuation, holiday pay and sick pay.

Employers First chief executive Garry Brack, who speaks on behalf of NSW businesses, says after the 1990s recession and downsizing in the labour market, businesses have become more targeted in how they engage workers.

"The labour movement wouldn't accept the argument but there is absolutely no doubt that the more difficult you make it to employ people - the more difficult you make it to terminate those (who) don't perform and pay redundancy pay and occupational health and safety and workers compensation - the more difficult that whole grab bag of issues is, the more reticent employers are to hire people," he says.  "More people are moving towards contracting because that gives them control over the fluctuating demands in the economy."

Australian Industry Group national industrial relations director Stephen Smith agrees, but puts some of the blame for the increase in labour-hire workers at the feet of unions.

"In sectors such as manufacturing, redundancy packages that have been forced on companies in the over-award area are so generous that companies are very reluctant to take on full-time staff and opt for casual workers," Smith says.

Unions in the manufacturing and communications industries are attempting to establish a labour hire industry award covering their sectors that would give labour hire workers the same pay and conditions as the full-time employees they work alongside and eliminate the undercutting of wages.

ACTU secretary Greg Combet says the demands of a more competitive and less regulated economy have also meant businesses are looking for ways to side-step the regulations that safeguard workers.

"Some in the labour hire industry avoid forms of regulation like tax, superannuation contributions, workers compensation premiums.  It can be a real fly-by-night are of activity," he argues, adding that with 30 per cent of Australia's 9.5 million strong work force employed as casuals, questions need to be asked about employment standards.

"We understand outsourcing and labour hire, but let's make sure that reasonable community standards underpin that sector of unemployment," says Combet.  "Is it fair and reasonable - in an advanced economy like ours that 30 per cent of the work force don't even have paid sick leave or a paid annual holiday?"

The NSW Government has conducted an inquiry into the labour hire industry and promises to establish a council to oversee the area.  The NSW Labor Council is planning a test case to determine guidelines for labour hire.

The Victorian government also will conduct its own inquiry to examine the increasing use of casual labour and the employment status of labour hire workers.  In Victoria, about 27 per cent of workplaces use labour hire and 97 per cent of those workers are casual.