Submission Dr Dan Woodman and others PDF

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The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010

Victorian Inquiry into the Labour Hire Industry and Insecure Work Submission by Dr Dan Woodman (School of Social and Political Sciences), Professor Johanna Wyn, Dr Hernan Cuervo and Dr Jessica Crofts (Melbourne Graduate School of Education) Contact: [email protected]

The Impact of Insecure work on Young People: Findings from the Life Patterns Project. Dear Professor Forsyth This submission provides a short summary of the findings of research relevant to insecure work among young workers from the second cohort of the Life Patterns study. Life Patters is an ongoing longitudinal study tracking the transitions of two generations of young Australians. We have asked participants about their experiences of casual employment and unsocial hours, and what features they are looking for in a job. We have not asked any questions directly about labour hire employment. The Life Patterns Project has tracked two cohorts of approximately 1000 young Australians from the end of their secondary schooling through their post school transitions. The first cohort finished school in 1991 and was tracked through to age 40. The second cohort left school in 2006 and has been tracked into their mid-20s (the average age is now 26). We will continue to track this young cohort at least for the next five years. The study has explored all aspects of life for young people in today’s Australia, including work (and its relation to study, health and wellbeing, and relationships). As well as conducting a survey with the participants most years, the project has interviewed a subset of 30-50 participants approximately every second year. Our submission is most relevant to terms of reference (b) iv. the impact of insecure work on workers, their families and relationships, and on the local community, including financial and housing stress. We respond to two of the questions listed in section 4. 5 of the Inquiry Background Paper: What are the effects of insecure work on Victorian workers, including their family life, community involvement, housing and financial arrangements? Do workers experiencing insecure work desire more ongoing working arrangements, and if so, of what kind? What barriers do you encounter in obtaining more secure working arrangements?

Causal and contract work and non-standard hours are common among young people. Most of our participants have had casual employment at some point during their early 20s, although this has become less common as they move into their mid-20s. They also change jobs regularly. Over three quarters of our participants have had between 2 to 5 jobs over the past five years, with 12 percent having over five jobs. In 2015 only 23 per cent expect to have their current job in five years’ time. ‘Flexibility’ can be beneficial to young workers. Helping them coordinate making a living with other aspects of their lives, like higher education. Yet there is no evidence in our study that this generation places a lesser value on job security than previous generations. We have asked the participants a recurring question about the factors that are important when looking for a job. The item that consistently ranks highest is job security. In 2009, at age 20, 86 per cent of participants ranked job security as of high or very high importance in a job. In 2015 this had increased to 95 per cent. (The high concern over job security has also been a constant for our first cohort over more than two decades.) The participants have made the following comments in interviews: I feel an issue that young people entering the workforce must contend with is the increasing casualisation of many sectors. It makes it quite hard to have job security and certainty. (Male technical support worker based in a major city (2014 interview) It can be difficult to juggle the demands of two part-time jobs - often seems to equate to more hours than just one full-time job. I also work from home in the evenings and on weekends, for my job as a contractor for a private practice, and this can sometimes be stressful and exhausting! It is also unsettling being on a 12 month contract for my job in the public sector - it has been renewed once, for another 12 months, and my employers are very happy with me, but there just aren’t enough positions for the number of people they have employed, so I’m unsure what will happen at the end of the year. (Female speech pathologist based in a major city, 2014 interviews) Even as they age and most of the participants have found contract and ongoing employment, some of the conditions associated with casual work have remained very common. In 2009, over 70 percent were working night or evening shifts or during the weekend, while this has declined somewhat, over half are still working these patterns in 2015, in their mid-20s. Most worryingly, when we control for study, there is very little difference between those currently ‘studying and working’ and those ‘only working’ in terms of working nights (42% and 49% respectively) and no difference on weekend work (both groups with 55% of them working that shift). This evidence points out to a ‘long’ week of work that is not just exclusive to those combining two activities (e.g. study and work) but to many young workers. A third of participants have variability in when they work. These patterns are often presented as less harmful and even beneficial for young people. However this is emphatically not the case in our study. Participants, highlight similar impacts from such work patterns as is associated with older employees. Even in 2008, at the age of 19, participants saw ‘unsocial’ hours and variability as having a negative impact on the quality of their relationships.

You can say ‘oh what are you doing? Do you want to catch up?’ and [friends] say ‘look I’m working I can’t go out’. Like there’s one good friend, he says I can’t go out during the week when I could go out during the week. That’s the problem he can’t go out during the week; he can go out during the weekend…..//In the hospitality industry, normally you’re working so you can’t go out. It’s one of those things that are a bit of a [expletive], but hey everyone’s got to deal with it. I mean hopefully by the time I’m fifty or whatever I can be sitting back and relaxing on my weekends. (Male hospitality worker based in a country town, 2008) The hours started to kill me. The irregular hours started to kill me. Some mornings you’d start work at 10 and sometimes you’d start work at 2 in the afternoon. I remember once I started work at 4 in the afternoon, I was meant to [finish] at 10 and I ended up working till 2 o’clock in the morning.//… You’d come home after you’ve worked a ten hours shift and your other friends… they’re at home drinking and partying and having fun and you’ve just come home off a ten hour shift and you’re [expletive] and all you want to do is sleep. (Male hospitality worker based in a regional city, 2008) The challenge of insecure work for the young people in the Life Patterns study is not simply financial. They value job security, and they want predictability and they experience negative consequences if they work unsocial hours or have variable schedules that they do not control. They continued to make similar comments in the 2015 interviews. The overtime and on call means I sometimes don’t have much of a life outside work. (Female engineer based in major city, 2015) Working unpaid overtime especially on weekends is quite stressful. I recently was seconded into shift work which greatly affected my wellbeing and socialising (Female radiographer based in major city, 2015). Our participants’ report that insecure work has economic consequences, making it hard to budget in the short term or plan, or save, for the long term. The greater consequence however, is social. The participants reported finding it difficult to combine their paid employment with maintaining relationships with significant others (friends, partners and family). Young people working irregular hours find it very difficult to regularly get together with close friends, or to find the regular periods of time most people need to build new acquaintances into close friends (or, as some complained, intimate relationships). Maintaining these close connections becomes more difficult and requires more coordination. This submission draws on research reported in the following publications: Crofts J, Cuervo H, Wyn J, Smith G & Woodman D. 2015. Life Patterns: Ten years following Generation Y, Melbourne: Youth Research Centre Cuervo H, Crofts J, and Wyn J. 2013. Generational insights into new labour market landscapes for youth, Melbourne: Youth Research Centre

Cuervo H, and Wyn J. 2016. ‘An unspoken crisis: The ‘scarring effects’ of the complex nexus between education and work on two generations of young Australians’, International Journal of Lifelong Education. Accepted 20 October 2015. Woodman, D. 2012. ‘Life out of synch: How new patterns of further education and the rise of precarious employment are reshaping young people’s relationships’, Sociology, vol. 46, no. 6: 1074-1090 Woodman, D. 2013. ‘Young people’s friendships in the context of non-standard work patterns’, The Economic and Labour Relations Review, vol. 24, no. 3: 416-432 Woodman, D. & Wyn, J. 2015. Youth and generation: Rethinking change and inequality in the lives of young people. SAGE Publications: United Kingdom....