Casual Work and Casualisation: How Does Australia Compare?

By Iain Campbell

What are the distinctive features of casual work in Australia and its rapid increase?

Campbell looks at different ways of comparing the category of casual work, looking at OECD countries for other examples of the category of casual, for parallel examples of temporary work and for a substantive equivalent irrespective of label. The distinctive features in Australia include the size of the regular and irregular casual workforce, its growth trajectory over the past twenty years, and also the size and shortfall of rights and benefits that divided casual and permanent employment, and the way in which casualisation is facilitated by the distinctive system of labour regulation in Australia.

(Labour & Industry; vol. 15, no. 2, December 2004)