Casual Employment
Introduction
Election promises from Labor and liberals 2004
2004 is an election year in Australia and one of the issues that the parties have diverse election promises on is to which extent employers should be authorized to use casual workers, and what rights the casual workforce should be entitled to.
Casual workers play a central part in the Australian labor market as it is the fastest growing form of employment. Next to Spain, Australia has the second largest casual workforce in the world (Munn, 2004), with an ongoing apparent trend towards additional increase. In a research note done by the Department of Parliamentary Services, it is stated that in 2003 that over a quarter of all wage and salary earnings were employed on a casual basis, and that since 1988 more then half of all new jobs created have gone to casual workers (Kryger, 2003-04). This leads to an open debate whether or not government intervention should be used to improve job security for the growing number of casual workers.
The Australian Labour Party (ALP) states; if they are to receive power, they will encourage the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) to give long-term regular employed casual workers the right to become permanent employed if the they expresses desire for it. This means that ALP wants additional permanent employees and less casual workers (Gartrell, 2004). While The Liberal Party of Australia (LPA) conversely has a devotion to enhancing labor market flexibility and believes that the ALP propose would hurt the economy to much. This will imply more casualisation of the workforce (Loughhane, 2004).
Casual employees
There is no standard definition of a casual worker, but one prevalent perception is that a casual employee ...