Lost in Translation?: Precarious employment and its challenge to trade unions

By Carla Lipsig-Mummé

There has been a sea-change in the language of work and employment in English over the past fifteen years, to the point that Annie Lennox' song, "Language is Leaving Me", seems aptly to describe our confusion

Nowhere is this 'linguistic sea-change' more evident than in the contradictory ways in which vulnerable work and vulnerable employment are characterised. Precarious and vulnerable jobs are re-badged as casual and flexible employment, and the Prime Minister has coined the term 'enterprise worker' to describe the transient, overworked and powerless employee of the Coalition's contested new industrial relations world (Norington 2005). In Australia, generations-old (male) expectations of ongoing and relatively secure work have disappeared, as well as individual expectations about entitlement to employment protection, individual rights and workplace citizenship.

For trade unions, the spread of precarious employment poses a multi-facetted challenge. Not only has it contributed significantly to the halving of trade union density over the past two decades, but it undermines employment in traditionally stable industries while creating a stratum of permanently marginalised workers. For unions, the diversity of conditions under which the precarious work may be contributing to the emergence of new work identities. Together, these challenge traditional union structures and practices of representation, a challenge that unions have found it difficult to meet.This paper links changes in the language of work and precarity with the challenge posed to trade unions by the emergence of this new group of workers who have begun to be known as the 'precariat'.

Living Precariously: The Struggle for Social and Economic Citizenship

Paper delivered at a symposium, hosted by Centre for Research on Work and Society in the Global Era (WAGE), held at the Melbourne Town Hall on 28 and 29 June 2005.