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This casual life






Working as a casual can be great: you get a higher base hourly rate to compensate for the fact that you get no sick leave or annual leave; you can mostly take holidays when you want them; and you can quit the job without having to give notice-yeah, right on! Until, of course, you find you really need that job. What rights does a casual have then? Precious few, it turns out.

 Look more closely and the benefits don't amount to much. Casuals have no guarantee of work from one week, or even one shift, to the next. Try organising a loan on that basis. Looking to pay off a car loan, rent a house or get a mortgage? Best to hook up with someone with a regular income if those are your aims. All this uncertainty and financial insecurity can make your life seem a bit out of control. It can't be good for the health.

Come to think of it, the benefits of casual work may simply be that workers ostensibly have a greater degree of flexibility. You can make your working life fit around other things e.g. creative projects, kids to hang out with, parents to manage in their old age, music to play, bush walks to do, roads to travel…

 But there's still rent and food and bills to pay. After a couple sick days, workers are hundreds of dollars worse off, and that money will never come back. Holidays are also revenue negative, so time off is costly. It's a precarious life, this casual life. It can work for you, or it can work against you.

The percentage of the workforce employed as casuals has risen to around 26.7% for female employees and 21.2% for male employees, according to recent ABS figures. 


Chart 1: Casual employment and the unemployment rate by age, November 2013
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Australian labour market statistics, cat. no. 6105.0, ABS, Canberra, July 2014.


For this cohort of workers, there is little, if any, job security. There may be limited access to workplace assistance, training and career development. You can be asked to work at very short notice, your shifts can be changed or cancelled with little notice, you can be asked to work when you do not want to. Workers are expected to adapt to the employer's needs because if you don't, we have plenty of others who will… 

This lack of security and poor career prospects got me thinking: how do workers deal with stress and mental health issues when employed as casuals? With no sick leave or job security, it's a tricky business, being unwell. Recent initiatives have asked how comfortable employees were mentioning a mental illness to their manager. Think how this would play out for a casual, with no guarantee of another shift, ever…The risks are high.

There is big money in keeping workers healthy and happy on the job. In 2014, Price Waterhouse Coopers produced a report addressing mental health within the workplace. The report showed that for every dollar invested by a workplace in implementing effective mental health strategies, return on investment was $2.30. Mental health issues were found to cost the Australian economy $10.9 billion a year.

But Beyond Blue CEO Georgie Harman has recently suggested that workers should carefully consider telling their employers about their mental health issues. In some instances, where the workplace has little awareness of such issues, the advice is 'don't tell them.' One of the concerns is that the depression or anxiety might pass, but the stigma could last, or that there is a potential for discrimination.

The Mentally Healthy Workplace Alliance has created an online tool for workers to assess whether they have a mentally aware workplace, and the pros and cons of revealing their condition. It's a tough call, when your next shift might depend on it.

Oh the joys of being casual. It sounds so carefree, doesn't it? Swinging along to work at odd hours, coming home late on weekends, zipping off to Europe or the Kimberley when the urge takes you. The reality for many casual employees is an unstable income, a lack of capacity to make long term plans, irregular work hours and a precarious existence if they become unwell. 

If only this working life were not so tenuous. 


Resources:

 For 'human stories...from the world of work', see the Union website Working Life
 
Business, community and government have created The Mentally Healthy Workplace Alliance with the aim of creating a mentally healthy workplace.

For workplace mental health tips and resources, see Heads Up



Postscript: this piece was published on the Working Life website on 9th September, 2015, but is no longer linked.
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