changing LABOUR Mkt

8/8/2019 changing LABOUR Mkt

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The Changing Labour Market and its Impact on

Work and Employment Relations

Mark Wooden

Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social ResearchUniversity of Melbourne

Paper to be presented at the ASSA Workshop on theFuture of Work and Employment Relations

University of Sydney, 30 November-1 December 2000


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Introduction

As in other developed economies, labour markets in Australia have been

undergoing enormous changes. Rising female labour force participation, theincreasing incidence of part-time and casual work, the greater importance ofeducational attainment as a precursor to employment, and the shift in employmentfrom manufacturing to services are all trends that were evident during the 1970sand have, for the most part, continued on into the 1980s and 1990s. In 1970, forexample, only 40 per cent of women participated in the labour market and womenheld less than one-third of all jobs, whereas today (i.e., the year 2000) femalelabour force participation is around 55 per cent and women account for about 44per cent of employment. At the time of the 1971 Census only a little over one-quarter of (28 per cent) of the employed workforce possessed a post-schoolqualification; today the proportion is just over one-half. Part-time jobs represented

about one in 10 of all jobs in 1970; today they account for over one in four. In theearly 1970s, one-quarter of all workers were employed in manufacturing,approximately double the proportion measured in recent figures.

More recently other trends of significance have also emerged. While there hasbeen a marked increase in the proportion of jobs involving part-time hours, the1980s and 1990s have also witnessed a growth in the proportion of personsreporting working quite long hours. For example, in the early 1980s just over 20per cent of the employed workforce reported working 45 hours or more in thesurvey reference week; by August 2000 this proportion stood at 28 per cent.Recent research also points to the distinct possibility that the 1980s and 1990s

have witnessed a rise in the incidence of contracting-out, involving increased useof both labour-hire firms and independent contractors (Wooden 1999). Like thegrowth in casual employment, this trend is generally viewed as symptomatic of abroader shift towards the flexibilisation of labour markets.

This paper seeks to review some of the most significant of these changes, but withparticular emphasis placed on the implications of these changes for the nature ofwork. Length restrictions mean that the review is deliberately selective.Specifically, the paper focuses on: (i) the changing industrial composition ofemployment; (ii) the changing skill mix of labour demand; (iii) the apparent trendtowards more flexible types of employment arrangements; and (iv) theincreased diversity in reported working hours. The paper concludes with someremarks about the future of work.

The Changing Industrial Composition of Employment

It is generally accepted that the last few decades of the 20th century have beenassociated with a marked change in the composition of economic activity.Sheehan and Tikhomirova (1998), for example, point to the significance of theadvent of the global knowledge economy and how that has contributed to the


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decline in relative importance of goods-producing industries and the rise inrelative importance of person- and knowledge-based service industries.

This is demonstrated very clearly in Table 1, which reports employment shares fordifferent industry groups. In 1970 goods-producing industries, which Sheehan andTikhomirova define as agriculture, mining, manufacturing, construction andelectricity, gas and water, accounted for about 44 per cent of total employment.Thirty years on these industries account for just 27 per cent of employment. Incontrast, the share of employment accounted for by service industries whichemphasise knowledge (such as communication, business services and education)and/or inter-personal skills (such as accommodation and restaurants andcommunity services) has risen quite sharply from 26 per cent in 1970 to 45 percent by 2000.

Table 1. Employment by Industry, 1970-2000 (% of employment)

Industry 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

Goods producingAgriculture 8.0 6.8 6.5 6.2 5.5 4.9 4.9Mining 1.5 1.4 1.3 1.5 1.2 1.0 0.9Manufacturing 24.5 21.6 19.7 16.5 15.1 13.6 12.6Construction / utilities 10.4 10.6 9.8 9.2 8.9 8.3 8.6Sub-total 44.4 40.3 37.4 33.4 30.7 27.8 27.0

Goods related servicesWholesale and retail trade 20.2 19.8 20.2 19.8 20.5 20.5 19.5Transport and storage 5.5 5.7 5.5 5.5 5.0 4.6 4.6Sub-total 25.7 25.5 25.7 25.3 25.5 25.1 24.1

Public servicesGovernment administration 3.8 4.8 4.5 4.9 4.7 4.6 3.9

Person & knowledge based services

Finance, property & businessservices 7.0 7.4 8.2 10.9 12.5 13.6 15.5Education, health andcommunity services 10.9 13.6 16.2 14.9 15.5 16.5 16.4Communication 2.2 2.1 1.9 2.4 2.0 1.8 1.9

Entertainment, personal services 6.0 6.4 6.2 8.3 9.3 10.6 11.2Sub-total 26.1 29.5 32.4 36.4 39.2 42.5 45.0

TOTAL 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Notes: 1. Figures relate to August of each year.2. Data for the period 1970 to 1980 are based on a different industry classification

system (ASIC) to that used in the construction of the figures for 1985 to 2000(ANZSIC).

Sources: Data available from ABS time series service and ABS, Labour Force, Australia:Historical Summary 1966 to 1984 (ABS cat no. 6204.0).


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What then has this change meant for the nature of employment relations withinworkplaces? Often cited are the consequences for trade union membership. It iswidely believed that these changes have had, and continue to have, a detrimental

impact on trade union membership since the new faster growing service industriesare areas which have traditionally not been highly unionised (see Berry &Kitchener 1989, Peetz 1990). Elsewhere, for example, I have calculated thatperhaps a quarter of the decline in the unionisation rate over the period 1982 to1992 can be explained by changes in the industrial composition of employment(Wooden 2000a, p. 20). Since then, however, this bias against unionised industrieshas changed markedly. While it is still true that the faster growing industries tendto be those that are the relatively least unionised, changes in industrial structurenow explain much less of the decline in union membership than they did in the1980s. Indeed, if the industrial employment distribution that prevailed in 1992 hadstill prevailed in 1999 the overall unionisation rate would have been just 0.8 of a

percentage point higher. This represents only about 5 per cent of the total declinein overall union density. Union membership in the 1990s has thus not been fallingbecause of relatively weak employment growth in the most heavily unionisedsectors; it has fallen because of a marked reduction in union membership rates inall industries.1

The most significant consequences of changes in industrial structure, therefore,arise not through their impact on collective organisation but through their impacton the nature of work. For example, we can expect the observed changes in theindustrial composition to have affected skills requirements. At a minimum, theshift away from goods production to services should mean an increase in therelative importance of inter-personal skills and a reduction in importance of motorskills (i.e., work involving physical strength, manual dexterity and motorcoordination). Some recent and rather innovative work by Pappas (1998)involving an analysis of the content of jobs using Census data provides empiricalsupport for this hypothesis. It has also been argued that the growth industries areassociated with greater knowledge intensity (Sheehan & Tikhomirova 1998),reflected, for example, in the greater diffusion of information and communicationstechnology and relatively high levels of investment in research and development.Changing industrial structure would thus appear to be contributing to a rise in theimportance attached to skills.

The other major consequences of changing industrial structure concern its impacton when work is undertaken and how workers are employed. Most importantly, amarked tension exists between the demands of many of the growing service sectorindustries and the concepts of standard employment and working time that havegradually evolved over the course of the 20th century. Standard employmentusually refers to ongoing (or permanent) full-time waged work (Burgess &

1 Analysis of compositional change is sensitive to the level of aggregation. The figure reportedhere is based on changes across the 17 major ANZSIC categories. For further discussion of therelationship between changes in the industrial composition of employment and changes in ratesof trade union membership, see ABS (2000, pp. 134-137).


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Campbell 1998, p. 8), while the concept of standard working time revolves aroundthe notion of an eight-hour day worked over a five-day week for 48 weeks eachyear (Buchanan & Bearfield 1997, p. 7). These so-called standard employment

arrangements thus concentrate work time into a relatively small fraction of theweek about one quarter of the available hours. Further, they provide employerswith relatively little flexibility to adjust labour requirements to meet inter-temporal variations in consumer demand.

More significantly, these constraints are of much greater significance to serviceindustries than they are to goods producing industries. Unlike goods, many serviceactivities, and especially those that are knowledge and person based, are not easilystored. As a consequence, there will be relatively greater pressures in theseindustries for labour to be deployed so that hours worked are closely matched tothe times of consumer demand. There are, however, no good reasons why times of

consumer demand should coincide with what are essentially institutionallydetermined standard work hours. Indeed, there are good reasons why it should not after all, workers are consumers too.2 Hence it follows that peak consumptionperiods will often occur outside the traditional 9 to 5, five days per week workcycle. Meeting consumer demand in the services sector thus requires spreadingworking times out over a wider range of the available hours, leading to theprospect of what some have labelled the 24-hour economy.

Standard employment arrangements also do not cope well with the tendency forconsumption to be concentrated during certain times of the day, week or year. Ifconsumer demand, for example, peaks for a few hours in the middle of the day,meeting that demand with a standard workforce will mean considerable excessemployment during the non-peak times of the day.

The new consumer oriented service industries are thus part of the explanation forthe burgeoning growth in non-standard employment arrangements, an issue thatwill be discussed at greater length below.

The Changing Skill Mix of Employment3

As already observed, changes in industrial structure would help explain any

increase in the level of skills embodied in the workforce. There are, however,good reasons to believe that, as a result of the impact of new technology inparticular, the premium for skill is rising within all industries. This certainly is theconclusion reached in both North American and European studies, which haveconsistently found that changes in both relative employment levels and relative

2 This tension between consumption and production has been provided added impetus by the risein female labour force participation which, in turn, has contributed to a marked rise (both inabsolute and relative terms) in the number of dual income earning households. For Australianevidence on the changing composition of employment within families, see Dawkins (1996,2000) and Miller (1997).

3 The discussion reported in this section relies largely on Wooden (2000b).


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wages have favoured more highly skilled workers at the expense of the relativelyless skilled (e.g., Colecchia & Papaconstantinou 1996, Machin 1996, Berman,Bound & Machin 1998).

In Australia, while relative wages do not seem to have changed much during the1980s and 1990s, marked changes in labour demand have occurred.4 This can beseen from Table 2, which reproduces data reported in EPAC (1996). While inter-occupation wage relativities changed little between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, movements in full-time employment levels have clearly favoured thosewith professional qualifications.

Table 2. Wages and Employment Growth (%) by Skill Level of Occupation,

Full-time Employees

Skill level Wages

1986-1995

Employment

1986-1994

High 58 24

Medium 52 0

Low 55 2

Note: High skill defined as comprising managerial and professional employees; medium-skill ascomprising para-professionals and tradespersons; and low-skill as comprising clerks, salespersonsand personal service workers, plant and machine operators and drivers, and labourers and relatedworkers.

Source: EPAC (1996, Table 6.1, p. 98).

Recently, however, the EPAC conclusion has been challenged, with data reportedin both Dunlop and Sheehan (1998) and Cully (1999) suggesting the conclusionthat there is no general trend towards upskilling.5 Cully (1999), for example, hasdemonstrated, using the revised occupational system introduced in 1996 (which isbetter structured to measure skills), that recent employment growth has beenpronounced in both high-skill occupations and low-skill occupations. UnlikeEPAC, however, Cully includes both full-time and part-time employment.

Consequently, some of his measured growth in employment may reflect apreference for part-time employment rather than any increased demand for labour.Further, Cully examines growth during the recovery following the 1991-92recession, which is bound to lead to an overstatement of the growth in low-skill

4 The absence of any change in relative earnings is exactly what might be expected given theincrease in demand for skilled professional workers has also been accompanied by markedgrowth in the supply of university graduates.

5 The Dunlop and Sheehan (1998) conclusions are somewhat puzzling given this paper appearsin a volume where the central theme is the rising importance of knowledge intensity. Theeditors, one of whom is Peter Sheehan, explain this away by arguing that the pattern of skillchange is very complex, and cannot be encapsulated in any simple generalisation (Sheehan &Tegart 1998, p. xi).


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employment given such employment is relatively more sensitive to the businesscycle. In Table 3, therefore, data on total hours worked, as distinct fromemployment, are reported. Further, the start and end points are chosen so as to

reflect similar stages of the business cycle.6

The method for categorising skills,however, is identical to that used in Cully. Consistent with the conclusionsreached in the EPAC paper, changes in the composition of labour demand duringthe 1990s are found to be clearly favouring the skilled professions.

Table 3. Growth in Aggregate Hours Worked per Week by Skill Level Category,

May 1989 to May 2000

Skill level

category

Aggregate hours

(mill)a

%Share (%)

Change in

May

1989b

May

2000

changeMay

1989

May

2000

share

I Managers /Professionals 73.4 92.0 25.3 26.4 28.7 +2.3

II Associateprofessionals 30.0 43.5 45.0 10.9 13.6 +2.7

III Skilled vocations 59.2 59.2 0.0 21.3 18.5 -2.8

IV Intermediate skills 68.7 79.2 15.3 24.7 24.7 0.0

V Elementary skills 46.3 46.8 1.1 16.7 14.6 -2.1

TOTAL 277.6 320.8 15.5 100.0 100.0 0.0

Notes: a Number of persons employed multiplied by average weekly hours worked.b Average hours worked in 1989 is only known for 1st edition ASCO categories. An

estimate for each 2nd edition ASCO category was, therefore, derived by applyingthe employment concordance weights to the average hours data.

Sources: ABS,Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6203.0), May 1989 and May 2000 issues.

Since 1989, total hours worked by managers and administrators and professionalshave increased by 25 per cent, while hours worked by associate professionals have

risen by a staggering 45 per cent. Together the share of total hours workedaccounted for by these occupations has risen from 37 per cent to 42 per cent. Atthe other end of the spectrum, rates of growth in hours worked in all occupationsinvolving intermediate or elementary skills (skill level categories III to V) have

6 The labour market was arguably somewhat stronger in May 1989, with the officialunemployment rate standing at 6.3 per cent compared with 6.7 per cent in May 2000. On theother hand, the employment-population ratio at May 2000 59.4 per cent was at the samelevel as that experienced in 1989.


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been below the national average. Changes in labour demand have clearly beenbiased towards skill, and particularly knowledge-based skills.7

Such trends are potentially of large significance for industrial relations outcomes.Most obviously, they serve to further undermine union organisation, withemployment growth concentrated in occupations where trade union services havetraditionally not been in great demand. Of even more importance, these moreskilled workers can be expected to exhibit less interest in the protections offeredby award regulation and third-party arbitration; the possession of valued workskills is all the protection many of these workers need.

The greater significance of skills also places pressure on the wages system todeliver greater flexibility. The rising skill premium increases the incentive foremployers to recruit the best person for the job and thus creates a greater need for

differentiation of pay across both individuals and enterprises. Of course, it mightbe argued that such flexibility was always possible given the availability ofoveraward pay. Nevertheless, this was not the way overaward bargaininggenerally operated, with negotiated overaward rates typically applying to allemployees at the workplace. Moreover, in the more highly unionised industries,unions were often successful in extending overaward conditions obtained in onefirm to workers in other firms covered by that award.

Growth in Non-Standard Employment

Another significant feature of the changing Australian labour market has been thechanging nature of employment arrangements. During the 25-year periodimmediately following World War II, most persons in employment had jobs thatprovided a steady wage or salary and involved regular weekly hours, typicallyaveraging somewhere close to 40. Moreover, there was every expectation that,subject to meeting some minimal performance standard, such workers wouldremain with a single employer for the bulk of their working life if they so desired.Today, the situation appears to be very different. Many more jobs involve eitherpart-time hours or irregular hours that vary from week to week (or both). Further,employment contracts are much more likely to specify arrangements that impingeon continuity of job tenure. This includes casual employment arrangements

wherein employment can be terminated without notice, or arrangementsspecifying employment of some pre-determined fixed duration. Finally, it iswidely believed that many firms are reducing their reliance on direct employment

7 Moreover, these findings are not simply a function of the aggregation of different activities intothe same skill level categories. Of all the major occupation groups assigned to skill levelcategories III to V, only one experienced a rise in its share of hours worked intermediateclerical, sales and service workers and the rise was very small just 0.3 of a percentagepoint.


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and, instead, are increasingly choosing to outsource some of their labourrequirements.8

As documented in Table 4, the proportion of total employment represented bypersons in so-called permanent full-time jobs fell from an estimated 76 per centin 1971 to 54 per cent by August 1999. New jobs are increasingly part-time defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) as work involving fewer than35 hours each week and casualised generally defined in the data by theabsence of entitlements to either paid annual leave or paid sick leave.

Table 4: The Changing Composition of Employment, 1971, 1984 and 1999

(% of employed persons)

Year

(August)

Permanent

employees

Casual

employees Self-employed Employers

Full-

time

Part-

time

Full-

time

Part-

time

Full-

time

Part-

time

Full-

time

Part-

time

1971 76.4 3.4 1.3 4.7 6.8 1.2 5.3 0.5

1984 65.6 5.0 3.9 9.3 8.0 2.5 4.4 0.8

1999 53.6 8.6 6.7 15.7 7.5 3.0 3.5 0.6

Notes: 1 Employment characteristics are based on the main job held.

2 Full-time and part-time workers are distinguished according to hours worked. Afull-time worker is anyone who usually works 35 hours or more each week oranyone who actually worked 35 hours or more during the reference week.

3 The percentages in each row do not sum to 100 due to the exclusion from this tableof contributing family workers.

Sources: 1971: ABS, The Labour Force, 1971 (ABS cat. no. 6204.0) and guesstimates by theauthors.

1984: Unpublished data provided by ABS and ABS,Labour Force, Australia, August1984 (ABS cat. no. 6203.0).

1999: ABS, Weekly Earnings of Employees (Distribution), Australia, August 1999 (ABS cat. no. 6310.0) and ABS, Labour Force, Australia, August 1999 (ABScat. no. 6203.0).

Furthermore, in addition to the growth in part-time and casual employment, it issuspected that in recent decades there will have been some growth in theincidence of persons employed on a fixed-term contract basis, some of whom willhave leave entitlements, and hence be classified as permanent workers. Personsemployed on fixed-term contracts, however, are quite distinct from permanent

8 The discussion in this section draws heavily on both VandenHeuvel and Wooden (2000) andWooden (2000c). For other overviews of the growth in non-standard employment, seeCampbell and Burgess (1993), Burgess and Campbell (1998) or Quinlan (1998).


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employees in that, in many cases, there is likely to be no expectation of ongoingemployment beyond the contract.

It is also often claimed that employers are increasingly choosing to outsource theirlabour requirements, which potentially has major ramifications for the wayemployment arrangements are structured. It is generally assumed that this will bereflected in a shift in the composition of employment towards self-employment,with contractors often seen as synonymous with self-employment. In fact, Table 4suggests that the growth in the self-employment share over the period covered hasbeen extremely modest, with the share unchanged since 1984. Nevertheless, notall self-employed contractors will be classified by the ABS as self-employed. AsVandenHeuvel and Wooden (1995) have noted, a sizeable proportion of self-employed contractors may fall into the employee category 21 per cent in theirsurvey data. Furthermore, outsourcing does not necessarily mean a growth in self-

employment, with many contractors employing their own workers. For example,in one survey of large workplaces (100 employees or more), less than one third ofthe average firms outsourced labour requirement was met through the hiring ofself-employed contractors (Wooden & VandenHeuvel 1996). Instead, the majorityof outsourced labour comprised either agency workers or employees of someintermediary company.

At this point a major caveat is in order. It is still far from clear how significantthese various trends are. As noted in Wooden and Hawke (1998), the ABSdefinition of casualness will tend to overstate the extent of casual employmentas a result of the treatment of owner managers of incorporated businesses asemployees of their own businesses. Many of these so-called employees are likelyto respond that they do not receive paid sick leave or paid annual leave and hencewould be classified as casual employees. Further, as highlighted by Murtough andWaite (2000), many casual employees have relatively secure, stable jobsinvolving regular earnings and at least an implicit contract of ongoingemployment. Indeed, drawing on survey data collected by the ABS in August1998 as part of its Forms of Employment Survey, Murtough and Waite calculatedthat less than half of all workers defined as casual by the ABS actually haveemployment conditions that can be described as casual.

This same survey also suggests that fixed-term contract employment is stillconfined to a relatively small proportion of the workforce. After excluding allowner managers, workers on a fixed-term contract basis were found to account for

just 4 per cent of all employees.9

The significance of outsourcing is also unclear. Data from the 1995 AustralianWorkplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS), for example, suggest that in

9 Almost three-quarters of this group, however, did work full-time hours and relatively few fellinto the casual classification. Removing them from the number of permanent full-timeemployees enumerated by the ABS in 1999 would thus reduce the employment shareaccounted for by full-time permanent employees to just over 51 per cent.


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1995 outsourced labour still accounted for less than 5 per cent of total labourrequirements (Wooden 1999).

However, whatever the magnitude of the growth, all indicators do point to thesame conclusion that the incidence of these various types of non-standardemployment is growing. Again such trends pose a serious challenge to tradeunions, with most unions not well structured to organise workers employed onnon-traditional arrangements; indeed, continued opposition to such arrangementsmust surely make it difficult for unions to persuade such workers that they caneffectively represent them.

It is the potential impact on the nature of work associated with these trends,however, that is of most importance, and within the literature there is a clear viewthat dominates as non-standard employment spreads the average quality of jobs

falls. Many, for example, have pointed to the heightened job insecurity arisingfrom the precarious nature of many of the new non-standard employmentarrangements (e.g., Burgess & Campbell 1998, ACIRRT 1999, Campbell &Brosnan 1999). Still others have emphasised the limited control that casual andpart-time workers have over their work situation and their relative exclusion fromworkplace decision-making processes (e.g., Hall, Harley & Whitehouse 1998). Itis also well recognised that growth in part-time employment has beenaccompanied by a rise in underemployment (see Wooden 1993), with sizeablenumbers of individuals being forced to accept part-time jobs simply because ofthe lack of availability of full-time opportunities.

Moreover, in this view, employer behaviour is often described as irrational and, atbest, short-sighted. That is, by structuring employment increasingly around short-term, performance contingent contracts, employers are undermining the incentivefor workers to cooperate in production.

The problem for the advocates of this view, however, is that much of the evidencepresented in support of this position is far from convincing. The situation withrespect to the assumed growth in job insecurity is a case in point. As documentedin Wooden (2000a, p. 128), opinion poll data suggest that there is little evidenceof an upward trend in job insecurity (despite claims to the contrary; e.g., ACIRRT

1999). Furthermore, there is no evidence of either a decline in average job tenureover time or a trend rise in the rate of job separations, either voluntary orinvoluntary (see Wooden 2000a, pp. 129-130). The finding of no decline in jobtenure is of particular interest given it is just as clear that the average tenure of acasual employee is much less than that of a non-casual employee. It thus followsthat for average job tenure to have remained little changed, the average tenure ofpermanent employees or casual employees (or both) must be increasing over time.

More generally, claims that non-standard jobs are necessarily sub-standard jobsare misleading. Indeed, a comparison of a range of job outcomes across differentcategories of employees using the 1995 AWIRS data suggest that part-time,


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casual and fixed-term jobs possess many desirable characteristics (see Table 5).For example, casual employees, while on the lowest rates of hourly pay, typicallydo not describe their pay as unfair. Indeed, 60 per cent of casual employees

reported that in their view they were paid fairly for the things they did in their job,which compares with only 44 per cent of full-time permanent employees.Furthermore, despite the more tenuous nature of their employment relationship,casual employees are not any more likely than other types of workers to reportfeeling insecure in their jobs. Further, the large majority (70 per cent) of casualemployees reported being happy with the hours they worked. By comparison, theproportion of permanent full-time employees who were happy with their hourswas not much greater (74 per cent).

Table 5. Employment Status and Work-related Outcomes, 1995 AWIRS

Outcome Permanent

full-time

Permanent

part-time

Casual Fixed-terma

Perceived influence overworkplace decisionsb 35.2 29.0** 21.6** 37.4

Overall job satisfactionc(%) 60.4 69.1** 69.1** 67.7**

Job insecurityd (%) 29.9 29.2 28.8 40.1**

Job stresse (%) 44.9 35.2** 21.7** 41.4*

Job varietyf(%) 86.0 82.0** 70.3** 86.5

Satisfaction with hoursg (%) 74.4 79.1** 70.4** 75.8

Received trainingh (%) 63.0 59.5* 52.5** 65.5

Fairness of payi (%) 43.6 51.4** 60.1** 50.3**

Hourly pay ($) 15.75 22.34** 13.34** 16.20*

Notes: Data are weighted to the population of employees at non-farm workplaces with 20 ormore employees.** and * denotes statistically significant difference from permanent full-time workers at0.01 and 0.05 levels (2-tailed test), respectively.a Excludes those on fixed-term contracts who were also casual employees.

b Percentage who said they had some or a lot of influence.c Percentage who said they were satisfied (those who were coded as not relevant tome were classified into the not satisfied group).

d Percentage who agreed with statement: I feel insecure about my future here.e Percentage who agreed with statement: My job is very stressful.f Percentage who agreed with statement: I do a lot of different tasks in my job.g Percentage what indicated they were happy with the hours they worked.h Percentage who indicated their employer had provided work-related training during

previous 12 months.i Percentage who agreed with statement: I get paid fairly for the things I do in my

job.

Source: 1995 AWIRS employee survey.


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Casual work, however, does possess some obvious unattractive features. Casualemployees, for example, are less likely to receive structured training provided bythe employer, typically do not have much influence over organisational decision-

making processes, and are less likely to report dealing with a variety of tasks atwork. Nevertheless, these negative job attributes appear to be compensated for byhaving jobs that are not very stressful. Indeed, casual employees typically reporthigher levels of job satisfaction than do permanent employees, though this maysimply be a function of lower expectations.

Like casual employees, permanent part-time employees are also much more likelythan their full-time counterparts to be satisfied with their jobs. Again lower levelsof stress at work and higher satisfaction with pay help explain this. Indeed, unlikecasual employees, the higher levels of satisfaction with pay among permanentpart-time workers are a direct reflection of very high average hourly rates of pay.

The data reported in Table 5 also suggest that it would be incorrect to classifyworkers on fixed-term contracts as necessarily belonging to the periphery ofinternal labour markets. Indeed, fixed-term contract employees fared as well as, orbetter than, permanent employees on most of the indicators considered. Comparedwith full-time permanent employees, workers on fixed-term contracts were morelikely to report having influence over decision-making, were less likely to indicatethat their job was stressful, were no more or less likely to report receivingemployer-provided training, reported slightly higher hourly earnings, and were farmore likely to believe that they were paid fairly. Only with respect to jobinsecurity did fixed-term employees fare poorly. It thus is not at all surprising thata relatively high proportion of fixed-term contract workers (almost 68 per cent)reported being satisfied with their job.

Finally, with the exception of perceived job security among casual employees,these findings are generally found to hold even once other individual and jobcharacteristics are controlled for (see Wooden 2000c).

To summarise, like more traditional arrangements, non-standard employmentarrangements possess both good and bad features, and if there is a diffuse level ofdissatisfaction with some specific conditions of employment then this appears to

be countered by widespread satisfaction with other elements of work. Indeed, ifanything, the evidence presented here suggests that the increased diversity inworking arrangements associated with the shift away from the standard workingtime model has facilitated a better matching of worker preferences to thepreferences of employers.

Working Time

The growth in diversity in employment types has also been accompanied by anincrease in the diversity of working time arrangements. A key feature of Table 4 isthe growth in part-time employment. Almost 27 per cent of Australian workers


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were classified by the ABS as part-time workers in 2000. By comparison, thecomparable proportion was only about one in ten in 1971. What the figures inTable 5 do not reveal, however, is the growth in the proportion of workers

recorded as working long hours. For example, and as reported in Table 6, just over28 per cent of the employed workforce were recorded as working 45 hours ormore during the survey week in the August 2000 Labour Force Survey (LFS).This compares with less than 21 per cent in 1975. Furthermore, none of thisgrowth would appear to be the result of compositional changes in the workforce the proportion of persons working long hours has increased in all majoroccupation categories. More importantly, the size of the increase has not beencorrelated with the rate of employment growth within each occupation. Indeed, ifthe proportion of persons within each occupation category working in excess of44 hours had remained unchanged at its 1986 level, the changes in theoccupational composition of employment that occurred over the next decade

would have left the overall incidence of long-hours workers totally unchanged.

Table 6. Composition of Employed Workforce by Hours Actually Worked (%),

1970 to 1999

Year

(August)

Zero

hoursa

1-29

hours

30-34

hours

35-40

hours

41-44

hours

45 or more

hours

1970 5.2 10.2 5.3 51.2 5.2 23.0

1975 6.4 12.6 4.6 51.5 4.3 20.5

1980 5.2 17.1 7.1 43.3 5.4 21.9

1985 5.1 19.4 8.6 39.2 5.3 22.4

1990 4.5 21.5 7.1 36.6 5.3 24.9

1995 4.3 23.9 6.7 32.1 5.1 27.9

2000 4.3 25.1 6.9 30.5 4.9 28.4

Note: a Includes, for example, persons on recreation leave, on sick leave, on strike, andthose who did not work any hours during the reference week because of shiftarrangements.

Source: ABS, The Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6203.0), various issues.

Thus not only have we witnessed a shift away from the full-time permanent wageearner model, we have also seen a shift away from the standard working timemodel. As discussed previously, standard working time arrangements revolvearound the notion of an eight-hour day worked over a five-day week. At the startof the 1970s at least half the Australian workforce appeared to be working thisstandard arrangement. By the end of the 1990s, however, persons workingstandard working time arrangements were very much in the minority, with less


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than 30 per cent of employed persons working between 35 and 40 hours duringthe survey reference week in the August 1999 LFS.10

As with the earlier discussion of non-standard employment, we can again use the1995 AWIRS data to examine variations across workers in job characteristics, butthis time cross-classified according to the number of hours usually worked. Theresults of this exercise are reported in Table 7. Consistent with expectations, theincidence of satisfaction with working hours is lowest among the long-hoursworkers (those working 45 hours or more each week). Sixty-three per cent oflong-hours workers expressed satisfaction with their working hours, whichcompares with 81 per cent of persons working standard hours (between 35 and 44hours). Nevertheless, the AWIRS data still suggest that the majority of Australiansworking long hours appear to want to work these hours. ACIRRT (1999, pp. 115-116) labelled such persons the consenting overworked and argued that any

worker in this category was either a workaholic or had no other choice hoursare needed to maintain their standard of living (p. 115). But no mention is madeof how high a standard of living is being maintained. Indeed, on most indicators,long-hours workers appear to be quite well off. They tend to be university-educated, employed in managerial or professional occupations and, mostobviously, are well paid. As shown in Table 7, even when their gross earnings aredeflated by the large number of hours worked, long-hours workers still earn moreon average than those working between 35 and 44 hours per week. This reflectsboth their concentration in high-paying occupations and the fact that they areindeed paid for most hours they work. While it is commonplace to distinguishbetween paid and unpaid overtime, this distinction is very misleading. Even ifhours worked in excess of standard contractual hours (as specified in the relevantaward, agreement or contract) do not lead to any increase in weekly gross pay,those hours are still remunerated, and is reflected in larger total salary packagesand in enhanced future employment and promotion prospects.

Persons working long hours each week are not only in reasonably well-paid jobs,it would also appear that their jobs possess other desirable characteristics.Compared with persons working between 35 and 44 hours each week, personsworking longer hours have jobs which appear to offer greater levels of controlover their work situation, greater task variety and greater job security; are more

likely to receive job-related training, and are generally more satisfied with theirjobs. Furthermore, these findings are generally robust across occupation groups.

10 Note that these hours data are based on hours actually worked rather than hours usuallyworked. The proportion of the workforce who usually work 35 to 40 hours is almost certainlylarger than the proportion who actually worked these hours given that some workers will havetaken leave during the survey reference week. Thus, while Table 6 suggests that 32 per cent ofemployed persons work part-time hours, part-time workers are actually estimated to representonly 26 per cent of the workforce in August 2000.


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Table 7: Weekly Hours Usually Worked and Work-related Outcomes,

1995 AWIRS

Outcome


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suggest that among men, at least, the incidence of stress-related illness due towork is not significantly greater among long-hours workers than among thoseworking between 35 and 44 hours each week (see Table 8). Among the latter, 4.5

per cent reported suffering from a stress-related illness as a result of work over the12-month reference period. Among men working longer hours, the percentagewas only fractionally higher 4.6 per cent. In contrast, women appear to be moresusceptible to stress-related illnesses, and moreover, the incidence clearly riseswith hours worked. This much stronger association between working time andstress among female employees is not unexpected and almost certainly reflects thedouble burden female employees face in attempting to combine paid work withtheir traditional roles in the home.

On balance, the types of jobs that are held by persons working long hours appearto be quite attractive. They are reasonably well remunerated and generally have

other desirable traits. Long hours, however, is a source of stress and hence givesrise to the possibility of adverse health consequences. The AWIRS data suggestthat such impacts are felt mainly by female employees. Among men, long hoursdo not appear to be associated with a higher incidence of stress-related illness.That said, health problems may not become apparent until later in life whichwould not be reflected in the data examined here.12

Table 8: Incidence of Stress-related Illness by Hours Usually Worked and Sex,

1995 AWIRS (% of employees reporting stress-related illness during

past 12 months)

Sex


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Studies reported difficulties in managing work and family responsibilities(VandenHeuvel 1993, p. 103). Such results are consistent with the argument thatthe number of employees facing difficulties in managing work and family

responsibilities has increased over time. Unfortunately, the two data sets are noteasily compared. Both the questions used and the scope of the respective surveypopulations were very different.

The issue of the balance between work and family life is also one where theAWIRS data are mostly silent. Perhaps the best we can do is compare howpreferences for fewer hours among persons working long work weeks vary withthe presence of dependent children. As expected, preferences for fewer hours aremore common among persons with dependent children (32% of males and 43% ofmales). Nevertheless, the differences with employees without children are notlarge (30% of males and 39% of females), suggesting the relationship may be

weaker than often assumed. While this result may come as a surprise, it isconsistent with data from time-use surveys which reveal that time spent by bothfathers and mothers on child care related activities actually rose between 1974 and1992 (see Bittman & Pixley 1997), before falling slightly between 1992 and 1997(ABS 1999, p. 39).

Concluding Remarks

Few would disagree with the claim that the world of work has changedsignificantly over the last two to three decades. What is far more open to debate iswhether these changes have been for the better. German sociologist, Ulrich Beck,for example, in his recent book (Beck 2000) describes the future of work as onewhere the concepts of full employment and lifetime jobs will become obsolete.Driven in large part by the globalisation phenomenon, jobs will becomeincreasingly temporary and insecure, replacing attractive, highly skilled and well-paid full-time jobs. For Beck the work society is ultimately doomed as peopleare more and more ousted by smart technologies (p. 2).

Beck is thus just one more in a long line of prophets of doom and gloom that dateback to at least the start of the Industrial Revolution. An inevitable consequenceof industrial progress is that types of work will be eradicated over time as new

technologies are developed, but these job losses have been more thancompensated for by the emergence of new jobs, often in entirely new industries.Even Beck (2000, p. 38) acknowledges this, yet he argues vehemently that there issomething inherently different about society today, largely because of itstransnational character, which effectively will mean the end of the modern worksociety.

Such predictions are obviously difficult to either refute or verify, neverthelessthere are many recent trends that do not sit well with this pessimistic vision of thefuture. First, skilled work is not on the way out. Indeed, skilled work is probablyof far greater importance today than it has ever been. New technologies do


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displace workers, but the workers at greatest risk of displacement are those withrelatively few skills. Indeed, the new technologies of the computer andinformation age are almost certainly complementary with skills. The future of

work, therefore, appears to be one where the pay-off to skills acquisition will begreater than in the past. Of course, this will also mean that the hurdle that lowachievers have to jump will be much higher, which in turn may lead to furtherincreases in inequality in wages and other working conditions.14

Second, predictions of a collapse in employment opportunities seem extremelyincongruous given that in many parts of the industrial world unemployment levelsare falling, and the long-term upward trend appears to have been arrested. InAustralia, for example, while we are still a very long way from claiming a returnto full employment, official unemployment rates are almost certain to fall in thenear future to levels not seen since the late 1970s.

Third, there is no evidence that in Australia at least, jobs are any less stable indeed, average job duration has if anything lengthened. Further, there isrelatively little evidence that job insecurity has deteriorated.

Fourth, while there has been a marked increase in the diversity of arrangementsunder which people are employed, there is relatively little convincing evidencethat this shift has resulted in deterioration in the quality of jobs. Indeed, it is oftenthe persons employed on a permanent basis working standard hours that appearmost dissatisfied with their jobs.

Finally, there is at least one group in society women who are, on most criteria,far better off as a result of the changes that have taken place in the labour market.While we have yet to achieve equality between the sexes, it is nevertheless clearthat women have far greater access to employment opportunities than ever before,and in large part this is a direct result of the demise of the standard employmentmodel, linked as it is to the concept of male breadwinner family units.

My vision for the future of work is thus an optimistic one, but it is also one wherepaid work will continue to be central in defining social inclusion and exclusion.As such policy-makers need to continue to ensure that labour market regulations

facilitate rather than inhibit employment growth. Moreover, the increasinglyglobal nature of capital increases this imperative labour market regulations thatmake the use of labour unattractive will, all other things equal, lead to capitaloutflows and reduce employment. Australia is already one of the highest costplaces to operate a global business; we, therefore, should not be adding to thosecosts.

While paid work will remain central to life in modern society, the character of thatwork is likely to continue to change in a way that will further undermine

14 This is not inevitable and depends on the relative demand and supply for both skilled andunskilled labour.


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collectivism and traditional notions of community. Key factors here are likely tobe further diversification in the times at which work are undertaken, greaterdiversification in where work is undertaken, and an increased use of

intermediaries in the employment relationship. Such trends will inevitably bedemonised by trade unions given the difficulties they pose for memberrecruitment and organisation. Nevertheless, such developments are consistent withother broader trends in society that have been conducive to a shift away fromcollectivist attitudes. Fukuyama (1999, pp. 47-49), for example, links a rise inindividualist attitudes in Western societies to decreasing confidence ininstitutions, fragmenting bonds of kinship, and participation in group life wheregroups are less authoritative and produce a smaller radius of trust. In this account,changes in the labour market are merely a reflection of changes in wider society.

If there is a worrisome side to current trends then it has to do with the large

number of hours a growing minority of us are working. The evidence reportedhere suggested here that, for the most part, persons working long hours werereasonably well off. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to be concerned aboutthe possibility of adverse health consequences, especially problems that take along time to manifest. There is also the question of whether or not long workinghours has impacted adversely on family life. It seems almost inconceivable that ithas not, but there is in fact very little Australian evidence that directly supportsthis proposition. This, however, is clearly an area that is under researched.

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