Deputy Director (Research)

It is commonly assumed that casual employment is a more ‘efficient ’ or ‘productive’ way of engaging labour. The reality, however, is that significant ambiguities and paradoxes are associated with casual employment in Australia. These concern: issues of definition, demographic characteristics of ‘casual ’ workers and their wages, hours, training and entitlements to superannuation and long service leave. Making sense of these paradoxes is essential for understanding the economic significance of the phenomenon. Analysis of these paradoxes reveals that casual employment can deliver short run gains for employers. This arises from their ability to deploy labour in ways which reduce the obligations they owe to it. The key issue is not so much reduced hourly wage rates as hours of work and associated rights. More comprehensive utilisation of labour associated with casualisation results in reduced unit labour costs (ie the labour cost per unit of output). This can be achieved without necessarily reducing nominal labour costs, such as hourly wage rates. There is, however, growing evidence that these short run gains compromise training and safety standards. That is, the better deployment of labour undermines its longer term development. Suggestions on how better deployment and development can be improved simultaneously are provided by reference to the practices of the better quality group training companies and multi-employer long service leave schemes