GUEST BLOG: Robert Reid – The end of the 8-hour day

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Twenty years ago we were reassured that “flexibility” was good thing. It was good for working mothers looking for a foothold in the workplace, or working fathers looking for more responsibility in the home. Flexibility was the future. Yet, in those twenty years, flexibility has being transformed from an occasional labour model used to meet the needs of some workers, especially women, to the labour model of choice of employers to dominate and exploit the working class.

This is the new battle ground for New Zealand unions: hours and scheduling. Employers call it flexibility, but it’s better described as creeping casualisation. Twenty years ago the idea was sold as one with emancipatory promise: workers finally had the freedom to refuse the choice between work and home – or so we were told. We now know, with the rise of employer practices like temping, zero and low hour contracts, that flexibility only offers precariousness.

In the transport and logistics sector, which FIRST Union organises, flexibility has come to stand for an arrangement known as triangular employment. What happens is that an end user contracts “labour” from a third party provider (such as a labour hire company). This can be done on permanent basis or for casual relief. It sounds innocuous enough, but triangular agreements allow companies to bypass many of the standard legal obligations owed to workers. It’s like a never ending cycle of casual labour.

This issue doesn’t have the same resonance as zero hours, an issue which transformed from longstanding grievance to scandal this year, but it’s just as insidious. Triangular employment keeps workers in a precarious situation because their employment rights are uncertain and they’re hesitant to kick up a fuss for fear of being replaced with new casual labour. Yet employers claim they need this “flexibility” to compete.

In the retail sector flexibility stands for insecure hours. When new hours become available employers will often hire new workers on low hour contracts. Flexibility becomes the privilege of the employer, not the workers, because when the workforce is kept on insecure hours it becomes a more compliant workforce. This even affects workers who we often don’t expect to see in insecure work like bankers and nurses.

In the finance sector, which has provided stable and reasonably paid jobs for many years, major banks are embarking on their own flexibility crusades.  ANZ, which criticised FIRST Union for exaggerating their attempts to introduce increased flexibility and casualisation late last year, is now having to eat humble pie with their Group CEO Mike Smith recently issuing a directive that all 30,000 roles (jobs) in Australia and New Zealand were to be considered flexible from the beginning of March.

So, on this May Day, take a moment to reflect on just whose interests are being served by “flexibility”. Then take a moment to join your union and so something about it!

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Robert Reid is the General Secretary of First Union

2 COMMENTS

  1. A timely reminder, thanks for this post!

    I did many years ago do some “temping”, and I was told it could lead to more permanent, normal employment, directly with the client company. But that never eventuated, and I soon realised that such were mostly empty promises.

    Temping is an area that deserves more attention, as too many end up doing nothing else than casualised work.

    Also can precarious work have very negative effects on a person’s health:
    http://accforum.org/forums/index.php?/topic/16737-work-has-fewer-%e2%80%9chealth-benefits%e2%80%9d-than-mansel-aylward-and-other-so-called-experts-claim-it-can-cause-serious-harm/

    Constantly living in insecurity and fear will inevitably bring worse health outcomes, which disprove the much hailed “evidence based” approach now used by WINZ, that work has “health benefits”.

    Maybe it does for some in truly suitable and safe jobs, but I dare challenge them on this being so in general terms.

  2. Excellent post. The people who benefit the most from flexibility are the employers.
    Related to this is the issue of actual hours worked. In the elderly care sector, already paying close to or at minimum wage levels, it is common for workers who are full-time to be rostered on a 4 days on, 2 days off rotation. Which means that you never work more than 30 hours in a 7 day period as the shifts are only 6 hours each. And every 6th week you only get 24 hours because of the rotation. The pay is inadequate, but you sign up because you need a job and there are none and you are on a benefit, and now you have “full time” work, and you are now “working poor’. Which is better than being on a benefit. But not a whole lot better.
    And, to quote Dolly Parton, “They’ve got you where they want you.”

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