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Casual University Work: Choice, Risk, Inequity and the Case for Regulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Anne Junor
Anne Junor*
Affiliation:
Industrial Relations Research Centre, The University of New South Wales
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Abstract

Australian universities now have a headcount casualisation rate near the national workforce average. Reasons for, and impacts of, this development are explored, and an argument is made for the role of industrial regulation in reconciling requirements for flexibility, security and equity in university employment. Responses to a large survey of casual academic and general staff suggest that this employment mode is a minority preference. Discrete groups of casual university staff, including those seeking university careers, those with other secure income sources, and students in transit to other careers, experience different forms and levels of insecurity and inequity. Appropriately targeted regulatory responses thus include criteria-based caps, a general staff conversion mechanism, a work value review, access to increments and service entitlements, and workplace representation rights.

Type
Current Issues
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , January 2004 , pp. 276 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2004

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Footnotes

1

This paper is based on evidence collected during one phases of an Australian Research Council SPIRT Grant funded project. Industry Partners were three TAFE Institutes, the ACTU, the National Tertiary Education Union and the Australian Education Union, lain Campbell, Jennifer Curtin and Barbara Preston were research associates in the other phases of the project. Thanks to Harry Oxley and Margaret Wallace for help with survey design and statistical analysis in the university phase. The views are those of the author alone.

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