BY CHRIS SPINDLER
MELBOURNE — Three hundred thousand casual workers in the manufacturing industry have won a boost to their conditions, following a successful legal claim by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) for improvements in job security.
In the manufacturing industry, the long-term or permanent "casual" worker has become commonplace — the number of casual workers in Victorian manufacturing has doubled in the last decade. Casualisation has greatly worsened job insecurity — many fear that they will lose their job if they take any time off or decline a day's work.
Most awards governing conditions of employment include allowances for casual work — but this is usually understood to mean workers who are called in for irregular, back up or emergency situations, not to employees who are really permanents.
In a December ruling, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission agreed with the AMWU that the excessive use of "permanent casuals" should be discouraged. The decision inserts new clauses into the Metal Industry Award that sets out the basic pay and employment conditions in manufacturing.
The IRC determined that when a worker has a regular and systematic pattern of work that lasts more than six months, then they should be offered a permanent position. They will have the option to defer the shift to permanency until after 12 months in the job.
Workers must now receive information about their appointment and, after three weeks, if they are to be employed on an ongoing basis, must receive written detail about duties, classification, rate of pay and circumstances of termination. These measures will help to move casuals away from the present situation of being hired on an hourly basis.
The decision increases the casual hourly pay rate in manufacturing from 20% to 25% of the regular full-time rate, providing an added cost incentive for employers to take job security for workers more seriously. The decision also requires casuals to be engaged for a minimum of four hours on any day.
The changes come into effect on March 1 and current workers have the right to elect to become permanent from June 1. The ACTU has announced that it will discuss a claim for other casual workers in March.