Casualisation has weakened worker solidarity but by sticking together we can change the rules
“Many
workers who have years of experience with the company are made to rely
on daily text messages, sometimes as late as 10pm, to confirm if they
have a shift the following day. Workers are afraid to speak out for fear
of losing shifts. The workplace culture is toxic, with many of us
facing bullying, intimidation and sexual harassment.”
That is from a petition by employees at Chemist Warehouse, the discount pharmacy group.
They were protesting about insecurity fundamental to the company’s business model.
The founders of the pharmacy chain became billionaires via aggressive cost cutting, and by using casual labour hire firms to staff the distribution centres for Chemist Warehouse and My Chemist stores.
As a result, employees alleged they were paid 25% below industry standards – and that they faced widespread sexual harassment.That is from a petition by employees at Chemist Warehouse, the discount pharmacy group.
They were protesting about insecurity fundamental to the company’s business model.
The founders of the pharmacy chain became billionaires via aggressive cost cutting, and by using casual labour hire firms to staff the distribution centres for Chemist Warehouse and My Chemist stores.
Today, only 60% of Australian workers are in full or part-time employment.
The rest of us work as casuals, on short-term contracts, in labour hire, or as “independent” contractors.
In 1982, the proportion of casual employees stood at 13%. Today, it’s about double that.
Casualisation’s long been endemic in certain industries. Some 79% of all workers in hospitality and 75% of staff in food preparation get paid on a casual basis.
But the trend’s apparent elsewhere, too.
Last year, Colin Long from the National Tertiary Education Union described the casualisation of higher education as a “national disgrace”, noting that universities now depend “on the same kind of exploitative labour practices that blight our economy more broadly”. He estimated that most unis now have “rates of insecure work that far exceed 50%, and many exceed 70%”.
A few weeks ago, I had a small taste of labour practices in higher education when I gave a guest lecture at a Melbourne university.
It didn’t pay very much but I liked the subject and the person organising it.
Besides, I needed the money.
Weeks later, I still haven’t been paid. I’ve now devoted far more time negotiating the university’s byzantine HR system – scanning a passport, establishing an account, accepting a “job offer” and god knows what else – than preparing or delivering that single lecture.
It’s an all too common experience.
Anyone working in the so-called “gig economy” knows what it’s like to go for weeks or months without wages owed to them. Every freelancer has been made to feel a criminal for chasing up payment; every casual fears that if they make a fuss they might never get another shift.
In the 1980s, the implementation of “workplace flexibility” began – like most neoliberal reforms – with a certain “woke” rhetoric in which the award system was associated with blokey trade unionism. By contrast, deregulation would, we were promised, be a boon to women and other oppressed groups, who would be able to work in ways that better suited their familial and other obligations.
In practice, the flexibility has only gone one way.
Instead of an empowering freedom, we’ve ended up with a debilitating insecurity, which, as Lavanya Kala and Hannah Gissane of the Equality Rights Alliance explain, “disproportionately impacts women, migrant workers, young workers, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander workers and people with disability”.
Not surprisingly, the modern workplace provides the perfect incubator for the kinds of abuse exposed during the #MeToo campaign.
“Those who are self-employed, contractors or casually employed,” say Kala and Gissane, “are more likely to experience sexual harassment than permanent workers.”
We’re often told that we can’t do anything about workplace rights, that the entitlements enjoyed by previous generations simply aren’t compatible with a modern economy.
And it’s certainly true that casualisation’s designed to weaken industrial solidarity.
At Chemist Warehouse, for instance, labour hire staff only learned the day before if they’d be coming into work.
As the forklift driver Dave Hiah told the ABC: “At any time they can just say we don’t need you tomorrow and you’re done, that’s it.”
That’s not a situation conducive to protest.
Yet, on 12 March, workers at Chemist Warehouse distribution centres in Somerton and Preston in Melbourne and Eagle Farm in Brisbane walked out on an indefinite strike organised by the National Union of Workers.
Sixteen days later, they marched back with what the Sydney Morning Herald called “a stunning win”, including a substantial pay rise, the conversion of labour hire staff to permanency after six months, and mandatory training for managers in issues relating to sexual harassment.
The ACTU has now made workplace insecurity a centrepiece of its Change the Rules campaign, with Sally McManus declaring it “the biggest issue facing Australian workers”.
Even Bill Shorten’s acknowledged insecure employment as “a problem” (though it’s far from clear what he’s promising to do about it).
But irrespective of the election result, the staff at Chemist Warehouse have shown that workers, by sticking together, can change the rules right now.
- Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist
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