On August 6, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released labour force figures for July that showed unemployment remained steady at 5.8%. However, while the total number of people employed stayed stable, full-time jobs fell by 16,000 while part-time employment rose by 48,200.
Since February 2008, when unemployment fell to a low of 4%, a total of 43,100 full-time jobs were lost. But 171,000 part-time jobs were created. Over the same period, the workforce grew by 343,000, leaving an extra 215,000 people unemployed.
Federal employment minister Julia Gillard welcomed the growth in part-time jobs. On August 6 she said: "[It] is a reflection of the fact that many employers, working cooperatively with employees and with trade unions, are striking innovative arrangements to keep people attached to work during these difficult days.
"I think employers <193> are doing everything that they can to keep their valuable employees attached to work and attached to their business."
Yet part of the growth in part-time jobs is because bosses are reducing hours — and reducing wages too. Also part of the equation is the federal government's "stimulus package", which gave cash handouts to workers, parents and pensioners and increased retail sales over the last six months.
"Retail sales are up and it's quite clear that part-time work, particularly female employment, is up", Professor Bill Mitchell, director of the Centre for Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle, told Green Left Weekly. "The only thing that can really explain what would normally be a reversal of that situation, is the stimulus package.
"The jobs that are being destroyed are full-time jobs and the jobs that are being created are part-time jobs."
But Mitchell said the employment prospects for workers were likely to get worse over the next six months. He referred to the Australian Industry Group survey of 500 businesses, Looking Towards the Upturn, released on August 11.
"The firms themselves said that their first reaction to the downturn was to cut hours. The majority of firms in that survey expected that in the second half of this year, employment would begin falling rather than just hours."
He compared the current recession to that of 1991. In 1991, the bosses' first reaction to dropping profits was to cut workers' hours. However, "ultimately the economy reached a point of such poor sales that firms began to lay off workers faster than they adjusted hours. So if we don't see sales growth transfer into output growth [average economic growth] over the next six months that would again be what happens here."
Mitchell saw little chance of recovery in the short term, particularly in the manufacturing and construction industries. "I don't see much prospect in the next six months for construction, particularly non-residential construction and manufacturing. They are sectors that are big employers of full-time labour, particularly male [labour].
"So what I expect we'll see for many months now is a continuing decline in full-time employment and what we may see, depending on the state of the economy, is a tapering off or decline of part-time employment growth."
Unemployment could rapidly increase as a result.
Even if growth should return, "the first thing that firms will do in response to increased sales will be to adjust their hours", Mitchell told GLW. Only when they believed that the economy had fully recovered would bosses begin hiring again.
"But that's a long way off yet", he said.
Faced with further declines in the economy, bosses are likely to move quickly to sack workers once they reach the limit of cutting hours.
Rather than accepting shorter hours with a loss in pay, whether it's part-time work or taking unpaid leave, unions should push for bosses to bear the pain of the recession.
All workers deserve shorter hours. The 38-hour week was won in 1981. Yet in 2004, the Australia Institute said the average Australian worked 1855 hours a year, compared to an international average of 1643 hours.
To match the average hours worked in other industrialised countries, Australian workers would have to stop working on November 20 and take the rest of the year off, the Australia Institute said.
Shorter hours would allow the work to be shared around. It would create more employment and protect more jobs. But workers should not have to pay with a loss in wages.
A move to a 35-hour week — or shorter — without loss in pay, would greatly lower unemployment at a time when working people are under so much pressure.
Workers and unions face a stark choice. Either accept the bosses' false promises and watch wages fall and unemployment rise, or fight for a shorter working week with no loss in pay and share the work around. What have we got to lose?