Casual workers - the underclass

摘要

When a large company downsizes it is big news. Unions complain and interviews with displaced workers appear on the evening news. However, less visible and therefore less obvious is the plight of casual workers. Almost one quarter of all employees in Australia -over 2 million workers - are now casuals who are rarely entitled to benefits such as paid annual leave, notice of termination or redundancy. Invariably when a company cancels a contract with a supplier, a raft of casual workers (subcontractors to the supplier) lose work. While it is painful for most leaders to directly sack someone, cancelling a contract and thus putting a host of unseen casuals out of work is fairly painless. As an employer, hiring people as casuals or subbies on short-term contracts is attractive if you want to minimise fixed costs and maximise flexibility in an uncertain market place. The other side of this equation is a growing percentage of workers who, grateful for any work, are pliable and suffering from great uncertainty, and often from economic hardship.