Bad Gig: industrial relations “reform” bill delivers flexibility … for employers

The federal government’s industrial relations “reform” bill offers a new definition of “casual” employment that creates more problems than it solves.

The new bill effectively defines a casual job as anything described that way by the employer at the time a job commences, so long as the employer initially makes “no firm advance commitment to continuing and indefinite work”.

I’ve drilled into previously unpublished data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to get a better sense of what “casual employment” means for those employed as such.

What I’ve found suggests “casual” employment is not about doing work for which employers need flexibility. It’s not about workers doing things that need doing at varying…