There are many reasons for the causualization of the workforce, some by choice, others because there is no alternative on offer.

From employees point of view, some simply want the flexibility, while others won't make the commitment, there are also those who have commitments with children, or some other form of carer duties, then there are those who won't take a full time job, as it effects their benefits.

There are even some who work enough hours to be full time, but choose not to as the pay rate drops, even though they accumulate entitlements.

From an employers point of view, casual means that at the end of each day/shift, the employee is actually 'legally terminated' and, you can choose whether or not to invite them back the next day/shift.

If circumstances permit, casual is the best option for bosses, as it simply makes the position on offer more competitive, which usually bring the best out of workers.

And of cause, there's that unfair dismissal law, proudly introduced by the then labor government, watered down by the libs, then revamped again by labor.

There is little doubt that our booming economy was linked to the watering down of UFD laws, back in the late 90's, at least for small business, which by the way, now have this law called 'unlawful dismissal' , which is the same dog, with a different leg action.

So if you are one of the many who work casual, but would like perm work, I am sorry to say that those days are all but gone.

Of cause there are those who will hit me with figures to suggest otherwise, but if we exclude mining?

rechtub,

In an earlier thread, you mentioned a colleague whose employees had been with him a long time as permanents - and all the extras he was now required to pay out.

Does it occur to you that they were good loyal employees because the relationship was reciprocal?

I see good steady permanent employment as preferable, as a contract of respect and good faith between employer and employee.

It works both ways.

Casual employment is becoming a pervasive blight on relationships between employer and employee.

Like a crappy landlord who ends up with the tenants he deserves - so it is with an employer who has negligible interest in the welfare of his employees. He ends up with those that he deserves.

I remember after work choices was introduced, there was a movement to permanent employment. Now with the fair work act making it impossible to get rid of poor employees, the shift is to casual work.

Says it all, Shadow Minister.

Says it all Rehctub, be blowed.

In actual fact SM wantonly indulges in the opposite to the truth. Workchoices forced un-wanted casualization upon the workforce.

Job security and its destruction through Workchoices was the very issue that caused hundreds of thousands of working people(union and non-union) to attend rallies in their city squares in protest against it's implementation and ultimately resulted in the PM himself losing his own seat. You can put lipstick on a pig all you like SM but it's still a pig.

The reason so many rejected Workchoices is of course, that the quality of everyones lives are ultimately effected negatively by the uncertainty of casual employment. Cant plan, cant spend, cant speculate to accumulate. The cumulative effect has been that service levels everywhere have deteriorated, product quality dubious and expensive. Being served by dis-interested, uncommitted and underpaid staff becomes tiresome and un-constructive.

Paying seemingly exhorbitant sums of money with inbuilt disproportionate margins of profit, for goods made in sweatshops by the downtrodden, drives me to a consumer conclusion that it's best to buy something, only if you absolutely have too.

Yes your right about one thing Rehctub, those days are gone.The days when your could make the choice too buy something genuinely good, and actually afford it. The days when you could have a really fine dining experience (with live entertainment) for a reasonable price and be catered for by staff showing pride in their establishment and product. The days when you were expected to provide the product first to ensure that it was satisfactory to your customer before you expected to be paid.

Poirot supplies a balanced view. The type of view that existed before the Howard years when business people and unions worked with each other and productivity gains were everyones focus. The days before industrial confrontation.

The Unfair Dismissal Laws were enacted as a result of the ratification of ILO Convention 158 in 1993 and had more to do with the "Accord" that was in force than some sinister Commie Plot to overthrow capitalism. Australia has ratified several ILO Conventions since 1931.

It was actually the Democrats who negotiated a "softening" of Keating's legislation in 1996 and despite some criticism it was found that unemployment figures continued to fall regardless.

The number of Federal applications fell by 50% after the 1996 reforms but only by 12% after the Howard 2001 reforms.
Most claims were pursued under State legislation and it was mainly larger corporations that used the Federal legislation.

The Howard claims that his amendments would create 77,000 jobs ended up being more like 6,000.

Later increases in claim numbers were probably more likely due to a more aggressive approach taken by employers than vexatious litigation by disgruntled employees.

What is really wanted by employers is the right to hire and fire at will and allow employees no legal recourse, as well as stripping them of penalty rates, paid leave and basically all other entitlements wherever they can.

Hence the rise in workforce casualisation.

Some may suspect that a totally casualised workforce and a return to the master-servant days would be an employers paradise.

The meaning of the word "unfair" strangely seems to be totally ignored in discussions about the legislation.

Perhaps the word "wrongful" would be more suitable, as is used in some other countries.

The only casualization we should have is the heads of Government Departments. Or at least change them when a new Government gets voted in.

Thinker how can you people be so delusional.

I agree with you that Howard went too far with work choices, & this needed to be addressed, but it is the unfair dismissal laws that caused me to stop hiring any permanent staff.

I also agree with individual, & don't want casual staff, apart from the occasion when short hours or days suit both parties. I have used it on occasions as a trial, moving people up from casual to full time, as positions became available.

Casualization is the bastard child of unfair dismissal.

I have been lucky, & have not had to sack many employs. On the odd occasion when I had made a bad decision in employing someone, the staff, not liking to work with someone who was unpleasant, or bludging on the rest, would get rid of them, they can damn soon make someone want to leave.

Apart from that, it can take many costly months of training to bring an employee up to worth having, why should an employer have to then accept the employee can leave at a weeks notice, but still have to supply employment for life?

Then we have operational requirements. If a marine operation changes from 6 X 100 passenger boats, to 2 X 300 passenger boats, their skippers may not be qualified to run the new boats, & they will definitely not have engineers qualified for the larger engines. Too many skippers & no engineers means a change in staff.

Continued

In the last company I ran we made a conscious decision to limit the number of employees due to problems we saw others having with unfair dismissal laws.

We had good market penetration in QLD, NSW & SA. Victoria & WA were poor, due to previous poor choice of personal. We decided not to bother with these markets due to difficulty of getting rid of people, if we made further bad choices, & the high costs if unsuccessful.

We closed the offices before unfair dismissal made this too expensive, & serviced a few major customers from head office. This proved a very good choice, when one of those recessions "we had to have" made survival quite difficult.

Unfair dismissal really means no dismissal because the jobs that would have been available, just never exist. Business people will no longer "give it a go" if the cost of an unsuccessful attempt at something is just too expensive, with the extra costs of unfair dismissal, particularly when there is nothing unfair about it, except to the employer.

I have witnessed the practice of unfair dismissal. We had several good people unfairly dismissed by useless bureaucrats in Qld Government Departments by the very Government who got a lot of mileage out of pretending unfair dismissal was in aid of the unfairly dismissed. In actual fact it is a disgusting con by the unfair to dismiss good people.

Other than your opening "you people" remark Hasbeen, I generally empathise with the rest of your post. (Only because I'm not sure of which you people you mean). If you mean lefties I would "not" consider myself one of those. Politically I am basically a civil libertarian Hasbeen.

In my mind there has to be some balance, when it comes to the employee/employer relationships.

Primarily because the individual's capacity to flourish at his own level is negated, when his incentive over time served, is pallid or non existent, in short he cant actually benefit from working harder, or more demanding hours, in the long run.

In my own experience Hasbeen, I have for the most part employed myself, but over the last 15 yrs I have been employed. I am lucky to have an adaptable skill set and for the most part haven't had to worry about keeping my job.

As for the amount of productivity I have personally created in my life as an employee, there is a yawning chasm between the value of this productivity for my employer, ("a considerable percentage of this wealth incremental for my employer I might add"), and the amount I have been paid for that, at the end of the day. Such are the conditions in the industry in which I am employed, so changing employers is not an easy option, in fact you may find yourself out of the fat and into the fire economically, having been employed on a raft of golden promises alone, after being poached.

If the underlying principal of being paid well, being respected by your employer through loyalty and application, is missing, and is replaced by a revolving door of faces at your local workplace, it is hard to place belief in this as a worthy and loyal employee.

I feel sure we both agree on this Hasbeen.

Wobbles, casual pay rates are between 21 and 25% higher, per hour, than perm. This is in lue of sick leave and holiday pay.

The fact that many workers blow it all and save nothing for tha rainy day, is nit the employers fault.

As for UFD, I agree with has been there.

Having been an employer myself, 88 to 2011, hi have seen a lot of changes.

Extended trading hours is one that rocked small traders, as it played into the hands of the majors.

Initially, late night and Sunday trading were slow and, the majors simply cut back on night fill staff and restocked many of the shelves between 5 and 9 pm.

Nowadays, most week nights are quite busy as people can come home from work, watch the news, have dinner then go shopping.

Pre extended hours, we could pretty much guarantee our turnover, which meant we could budget better and plan rosters better.

Now, some afternoons small retailers get smashed and find themselves under staffed, while on other days they literally stand around picking their noses.

So extended trading is another contributor to casual hours.

But without a doubt, the largest impact in my time was UFD.

I saw many one man businesses pop up as they were not game to employ.

Now unless you have been there you really don't know, but of cause you can use the stats, the same ones that say we have 4.9% unemployment.

DREAM ON,

Thinker perhaps you missed the bit where I said I have not had to sack many people. I did however, after unfair dismissal came in, have to terminate a number of people, near the completion of a 3 months trial period. In all but one instance I would have given the person a bit longer to make the grade, if dismissal had not become so difficult, once they became permanent. This was the thing I hated most about management.

Towards the end of my career I developed a reputation as a business saver. I did enjoy bring a company back from the brink, or even going down the slippery slope of bankruptcy, back to viability.

It could be demanding on everybody, when staff numbers were at a minimum, & you were walking a tight rope between paying the bills, & getting the money in to pay them.

I found it was not how much but how you paid people that made them happy. With a company climbing up the slope it was really great to be able to say, "We have increased the turnover by 10% this month, if we can hold that for another 2 months, every one gets a 10% rise". People love feeling they have earned the rise, & have received it as deserved.

T2,

I don't care whether the pig has lipstick or whether she wears a hat, the reality is that for the many thousands of small businesses that employ small numbers of people, the unfair dismissal laws place a huge compliance cost on hiring permanent employees, and many businesses trying to shed employees that are dishonest or abusing substances find themselves blackmailed by labour lawyers threatening extended litigation.

Your argument is rubbish SM, because the entitlements a person can receive by winning an unfair dismissal case are negligible anyway and an employee must have the cost of pursuing it at his disposal. Howard ensured that workers would have little more than a technical recourse, when its comes to UFD or pay claims.

I have documents in my possession regarding shortfalls of award wages paid to me through unpaid work hours in my industry over 15 years, that I presented to Workchoices, whom responded in writing by saying that all the work practices that I described were illegal. They went on to say that I had a right to take legal action to recover my losses at my own cost.

If I ever made these correspondences public I would never work in my industry again.

This very subject is something you can tell me nothing about SM.

Therefore I am not going to let you get away with your mis-information on this subject.

As usual you are ignoring the reason unfair dismissal laws are necessary in the first place.

In order that employees are not displaced through ageism, racism, your not pretty enough, or won't respond to your employers sexual advances, or some other form of discrimination, or because your manager doesn't like you, or perhaps your politics SM. Perhaps they simply want to get rid of you because you are a member of a union. And so on and so forth.

Finally you are talking up the cost of UFD to employers, and its downside overall. In most cases employees could never take the cost, the risk, the stigmata, and the pain of pursuing a UFD claim upon themselves anyway. So it just doesn't happen in most cases anyway.

T2, by your own admission, you have not been an employer, facing the obsticals that have been placed in our way.

UFD cases cost employers more than employees, as they are not making an income while defending their rights.

Now as for our rights as an employer, why can't we choose the best person for the job.

Sometimes you have to go with who you can find a the time, hoping a better worker will come along, much the same as workers will take the job, until something better comes along.

UFD allows emplyees to have their cake, and eat it.

UFD for employees, is also, unfair employment for employers, as they don't have the same rights.

As for the three month trial, you should be able to record a workers efforts, then use that as evidence when they slacken off.

But hey, that would be too balanced for unions and labor.

They are FD laws, without doubt, the worst laws ever introduced.

Introduced by labor, the country stalled, watered down bynthe libs, the cow try boomed, tightened again, some years latter by labor, and guess what, the cow try has stalled again.

What more evidence do you need.

Everyone turns to casual when there is a squeeze on.
Have a look around, this is not confined to AU, the world is broke.
100 Billion wiped off stock in a few days, because Greece can't find a way forward. What has Greece got to do with AU.
They say investers got nervous, so the whole of the country suffers.
Au is seen as a safe haven for investors, we are paying an all-time low for govt borrowed money.
10 year bonds 2.5 % AU Greek 10 year bonds 10%.

T2
The fear campaign run by the unions against work choices neglected to mention that for small companies, the UFD laws were only relaxed for procedural reasons not discrimination, harassment etc. A person could be retrenched without the lengthy negotiations and paperwork required.

The "fair" work act has now meant that retrenching or dismissing staff can be successfully challenged unless a huge amount of paperwork has been correctly completed in minute detail. This has meant that the cost of employing people full time has become far more expensive. While casual labour supposedly has a premium, but the FWA has a far higher premium.

T2, you claim that I can't tell you anything about this subject, but know nothing from the employer's side (who decides how to employ), and the legal problems you have applies equally to the FWA which does not differ for such issues.

Casual labor is the employers only way of choosing the employee they want, especially when then right person is not available For the job, a the time.

Then, when a more suitable employee comes along you simply stop employing one casual and employ the next one.

Even this gets challenged at times.

I had three staff at one stage, none had a licience, then, when my circumstances changed and I needed to deliver meat, it was unlawful for me to sack one and replace the. With a licensed employee.

I was advised that the best I could do was to ensure that having and holding a licence was a condition of employment, but as for my current employees, there was nothing I could do.

So, I had to leave my shoo to do deliveries, five days per week.

Of cause my business suffered.

Casual employment has been forced upon employers, by labor and is here to stay, unless of cause there are some serious changes in IR.

As long as the laws are not fair to both parties, employers will always find a way to overcome the burdens forced upon them.

After all, their houses are often on the line.

Truly my heart goes out to you, rehctub. You were born in the wrong century and you took up the wrong trade. You would have been at home somewhere around 1800 in the north of England as a mill or factory owner.

No government legislation then - and lots of poor desperate workers (Hoorah!)

Not at all Poirot, I have always been a great employer, too good most of the time.

I was only saying the other day that in my 20+ years of owning a cash business, I probably had at least a quarter of a million stolen from me, both in meat and cash.

People say it my fault for not being there all day, every day.

Theyre right, but isn't that a shame.

My issues with employment now are that the odds are stacked against employers, that's why many of them are now employing on either casual, or term contracts.

Why, because we have simply lost the flexibility we need to run our businesses.

If you, or anyone else for that matter, can honestly sit there and say that it is fair for workers to have the right to walk out, at any time, simply because they found a better job, while employers don't have the right to terminate one staff member, when a better one comes along, then it is you who are bias.

Labor knows employers prefer casual labour now, that's why they have increased the loading from 20% to 25%, trying to encourage employers to switch back to permanent employment.

Won't work, can't work, until fairness is resorted for both parties.

Like it or not, casualization of the workforce has been forced upon us by the labor governmentS.

Everyone forgets the one simple rule, that being, that for every action, there is a reaction.

We (employers) warned about it prior to labor winning the 07 election.

I said whatbthey were proposing would damage confidence and cost jobs.

Well!

Now if you want to hit me with the old 4.9% unemployment, I have two words for you DREAM ON!

Equal rights is a two way street.

Rehctub,

Yes, if your workers can up and leave, I suppose that does get on your nerves.

But I've worked for bosses who really seem to have employees welfare and job satisfaction at heart. They enjoy the luxury of having a stable, energetic and conscientious workforce. I've also worked for employers whose only concern is the bottom line - who are continually on the lookout for someone trying to diddle them, their only concern is the profit they are making. The latter are the ones who constantly lose employees because there is no reciprocating loyalty.

Poirot, the way business is performed has changed dramatically in the twenty plus years I have been an employer.

Retail, which I touched on earlier has changed, so much so, that casuals are a way of life, as sales can fluctuate by 30% or more, from week to week.

How do you plan for that, without having at least some of you staff on casual.

Labor has continually tried to make it harder to hire casuals, like making us advise a casual of their finishing time, before they start and, if it's quiet, you can't send them home early, or you have to pay penalties.

So what we have to do is offer them a minimum shift, then, if you're busy, you offer them additional hours, which are usually taken as they need the money. No penalties apply.

We often have several casuals doing four hour shifts, so, if it's quiet you can cancel the next shift.

Now that's simply unfair on workers, but hey, we are not the ones who tied our hands behind our backs.

The relationship between staff and employers has been serverly damaged with the enforcement of UFD laws on employers.

I often say, be careful what you push for, as you make not like the result.

They ( the government /unions) pushed, and casualization of the workforce is the result.

Online shopping has caused a great deal of problems as well, also the continued unchecked domination of Coles and Wollies.

Now they are worse, as not only do they have casuals, but they also have several salary staff that do countless hours of unpaid work, all on the promise of advancement.

With our world crumbling, AU as well, where will we be if unemployment goes to 10+%, by labor's calculations.

You recon job security is low with casual employment!
brace yourself, I say, because they are about to give one of the few sectors that are booming, a huge kick in the guts.

As long as we get casual authorities who impose casual regulations we'll have casual employment.

As long as employers hands are tied, they will find ways around the laws.

I agree Indi, it's time again for Gov'ts that take a real interest in the welfare of the people they represent, the taxpayer, the man on the street, not the companies, not the corporations, and particularly in this country after the scales have been weighted by pure faulty ideology.

We had unique opportunity in this country to deliver power to the people, then we voted for John Howard and the deterioration toward corporate slavery began.

The purest principle in the Australian psyche was that of a fair go. Why then did we abandon the principal that a fair price is one, that reflects the cost of the item.
For example , why do we pay the same price now (in a retail store) for a product made in a sweatshop from companies that stoop as far as child labour, for something that we used to make ourselves ?. (The difference being the quality, the ethics, and the profit margin for someone in the chain).

Answer "because thats the path that business minded people have chosen for us". Given the opportunity Australian business leaders have taken advantage of a dis-regulated business environment, and not delivered the mythical advantage of competition.

My Telco now tells me that they have been charging me a substantial fee to retain my email address, so now my email, doesn't work while they sort it out. It's my original email address that I have had from the start that we are talking about here.

Now that we have noticed this charge, it is not clear how much money we are owed over years or whether we will ever recover it, if we are. Thats service for you, some operator in another country attempts to placate your concerns in a very strong accent, then asks for grading. Meanwhile your still in never never land, not really knowing how you have fared. During this problem, the only thing we knew for certain at the end of our attempts to deal with this, was that my email wouldn't work for a while. It was either that or pay the ransom.

cont....

Truth is, it is not clear, who's fault this is, but the deliberate dis-regulation ( I don't mean deregulation) has made it convenient for my major telco to operate with relative impunity towards me the consumer, and there is little effective recourse I have to pursue the matter at the end of the day. As is the case in most consumer matters now days, it may end up a case of caveat emptor. Regardless there is absolutely no justification either morally or attached to cost of providing my email address for my provider, but they still see fit to charge me rent for something that was mine when I originally signed up with them. (I mean many years ago).

It's a long story. My point is, that along with issues like casualisation, financial uncertainty, job security, wages have been falling way behind the cost of living for years now, due to the absence of indexed to inflation wage increases, funded by business (that were once a regulated right for Australian working people), living standards have declined for the majority of people.

Along with all that, the price of things have no rhyme or reason, or attachment to the cost too suppliers of goods or services they provide anymore. In effect we have no effective tools left to control the economic betterment of the average person against rorting, exploitation of the gullible, or for people like me, whom still have some misbegotten hope that the Aussie sense of a fair go, still exists somewhere.

T2, consumers have caused the furious discounting you are now seeing and, because they all know the item is imported, costing local jobs, causing sweat shop labor, it is they who are as much to blame as any retailer.

Online shopping is another huge cause of discounting, again gaining momentum each and every day.

Most people think one way, but react another, as they think with their hearts, but buy with their wallets.

Not all consumers think that way Rehctub and, in fact my wife downloaded an app on her phone that helps to identify the ethical or lack of ethical behaviour of the parent and connected companies of producers of items on our supermarket shelves, allowing a thinking consumer to purchase from suppliers that are not the worst offenders in terms of business practices, such as child labour.

So the internet has an upside so long as it remains free of Corporate or Gov't control.

The app I mentioned earlier would quickly disappear from the airwaves should people like Rupert and Gina gain control of the Internet.

No doubt not all employers are satisfied only when exploiting others either Rehctub, I'm not suggesting that, but regardless we live in a representative democracy, so therefore it is the Gov'ts role to ensure that consumers are not being ripped off through collusion or price fixing and to also ensure (and in conjunction), that working people are not being exploited.

In both of these area's regulation was smashed by the Howard Govt and replaced with a free for all, heading for the lowest common denominator. It is almost impossible to police or detect wrongdoing through over charging or underpaying people. We descend to subsistence employment for the lowest paid workers whom cant pay their bills even if they work full time. Combine that with unfathomable increases in charges for privatised essential services like power, fuel, communications etc and so on. And this recipe will culminate in serfdom in the end with a privileged few basking in the glory of their own personal wealth. As we already see with Rhinehardt, Palmer, Forrest, Packer, Murdoch, and co, today as we speak, they publicly trumpet their unmitigated power, as do the banks.

T2, I say bravo for your wife, but the reality is, she is the minority.

Now as for low paid being able to live on a full time wage, they can, but they choose not to.

Take away the mobile phone, the plasma and any other form of lux and they may have a chance.

However, when I was younger, if you were not in a high paid Job, you had to work 60 hours a week if you wanted to have your cake and eat it. This is where the system has fallen down.

As for Howard, just remember, the country was flat when he arrived, boomed when he changed IR, so much so that when he left, we had HAD money in the bank.

Now he's gone, and we are back to square one.

Labors IR policies simply make the worst workers, the new benchmark, because it become harder to reward the better worker.

Casual employment will remain while ever you have UFD laws as they are.

They (labor and the unions) pushed, so this is the result.

Except that your post begins with a false premise Rehctub.

"As for Howard, just remember, the country was flat when he arrived, boomed when he changed IR, so much so that when he left, we had HAD money in the bank".

Howard inherited a booming and golden economy from Keating whom some 13 yrs earlier had received a basket case economy with rampant unemployment and galloping inflation from the years when Howard was Treasurer.

As for the money in the bank to which you refer, this was from the sale of important, profitable, valuable and strategic public assets like Telstra. Selling farm so we could rent it back off the people we sold it too. It is the most absurd piece of wise arse economics you will ever see, and has since cost Australians billions of corporate profits all flowing overseas. And they don't even maintain the Network, they expect us to do it , just as they will expect to be able to buy the NBN once the difficult and expensive rural bit is completed. They'll be expecting first option to buy the ground breaking fibre network from an incoming Abbott Liberal Govt, so they can maintain their market monopoly, lauding power over the price we pay for communications for evermore.

Smart operator that Howard (sic) Rehctub.

There has only been one deficit larger than the one Keating lef behind, and that's the Rud/Gillard one. Sadly, they havnt finished yet.

Country was booming you say.

Yes, I remember those days, many businesses went broke, interest rates early 90's around 18%.

Yep, they were great times.

As for selling Tesltra, I was filthy about that, but just remember, if your smart man hadn't lelf such a mess, perhaps this would not have occurred.

God knows how we will get out of this mess, cause there's nothing left to sell, no money left and a credit card that we will be lucky to service the interest on.

Finally, you think it's tough for casuals, try running a retail business, if you wish to find out what tough going is.

There is a fair chance full time work will make a come back under the coalition, but not in the first term, maybe the second or third.

First we need to restore the fair days work for a fair days pay, then we need to win back the confidence of employers that they won't be shafted again.