Australian Financial Review Dec 30, 1998 http://www.afr.com.au/content/981230/news/news6.html Casuals now fill 17pc of jobs: survey By Mark Lawson The major trend towards the "casualisation" of the workforce is accelerating with casual and contract workers now filling 17 per cent of all jobs, according to a recent survey. The survey by employer group Drake International across all sectors of the Australian economy this year (1998) found that 17 per cent of all workers were casual or contract workers, compared to a figure of 11.6 per cent established by a survey in 1993. Although the greatest growth was in casual and temporary work which increased by four percentage points to 13 per cent of the total labour market over five years, contract workers also gained ground. They now account for 4 per cent of the market, compared to 2.6 per cent in 1993. Drake executive director Mr Peter Renfrew said that flexible staffing had been growing fast for some time but he believed that the rate had accelerated in recent years, to be around 20 per cent a year now. "What has really kicked it along in recent years has been the move to project-based work as well as the ongoing restructuring of the workplace -- a trend that is unlikely to change as companies work hard at remaining recession-proof," he said. As employers were increasingly adopting strategies to minimise their permanent staff, such as keeping only a core workforce and supplementing it with temporaries at peak time, workers should accept the inevitable and begin managing their careers more effectively. Mr Renfrew said that part of what was involved in managing a career was not to become too closely identified with one company, one skill or even one industry. "People need to view themselves outside the confines of their organisations," he said. "They may find that while they are good performers internally they are, in effect, stuck -- that they have become so closely identified with a particular company or industry that their skills are not viewed as being transferable into another setting." One good rule to avoid that predicament was to try to learn a new skill every six months, as the more people learned the more options they had. Mr Renfrew commented that there would be a shift in society's perceptions of temporary workers. Society would no longer see temporary workers as having a lower status than those fortunate enough to have a permanent job, Mr Renfrew said. c This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." end ============== Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html The Year 2000 Bug - An Urgent Sustainability Issue http://www.peg.apc.org/~psutton/grin-y2k.htm
