Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the second interim report of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security, and I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I'd like to thank the committee members, Senators Walsh, Faruqi, Canavan and Small, for their involvement and the committee secretariat for their tireless efforts. This is the second interim report of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security. The first interim report focused on the gig economy. It revealed that companies like Uber, Deliveroo and Amazon are having a corrosive impact on the standards and conditions of work in Australia. But the findings of the second interim report are more concerning still, because what it reveals is that it isn't just Uber and Amazon driving insecure work in Australia. In fact, no employer in Australia is doing more to drive insecure work than the federal government. The federal government engages hundreds of thousands of workers in the Australian Public Service and is the economic employer of millions of workers around Australia in jobs that it funds—jobs in sectors like aged care, higher education, the NDIS and the NBN.

It is deeply troubling that insecure work has become the norm in these sectors. If publicly funded jobs aren't safe from the pandemic of insecure work, then what job is safe? In aged care, we have received deeply unsettling evidence about the conditions of the workforce. The government's 2020 Aged Care Workforce Census revealed 94 per cent of aged-care workers are engaged as casuals, subcontractors, labour hire or part-time. For those lucky enough to be engaged as part-time, the norm in the industry is for contracts with low minimum hours or even zero minimum hours, which widely fluctuate from one week to the next. Aged-care workers have told us firsthand how these contracts are weaponised to create a permanent state of uncertainty and fear. One care worker, and a Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union member, Sherree Clarke, said: 'You can't plan anything because you don't know what your roster is going to be from one fortnight to the next. When my mother went through cancer, I couldn't tell her that I would support her for her cancer appointments, because if you're not available to pick up a shift, they don't offer you that shift the next time'.

We already know, thanks to the royal commission, that our aged-care workforce is understaffed and underpaid, and this is the principal cause of substandard care. Unfortunately, the situation is only getting worse. While the government ignores key recommendations from the royal commission, the committee also heard that gig platforms like Mable are creeping into the sector. As the Health Services Union's Lauren Hutchins said, 'Platforms like Mable are a combination of Tinder and Uber, where you swipe left or right on a worker who is being engaged by Mable as a contractor to avoid paying the minimum wage, avoid paying superannuation and avoid paying workers' compensation.'

Unfortunately, these platforms have already swarmed into another publicly funded sector, the NDIS. It is a national disgrace that an opportunity like the NDIS, where the government could have created hundreds of thousands of secure jobs with a living wage, is instead home to worker exploitation. Both workers and participants are suffering as a result.

It is the same story in higher education, as NTEU national president, Dr Alison Barnes, said: 'Only one in three jobs in our universities is permanent or ongoing. That means that the vast majority of our teaching research and professional support services are undertaken by workers who are not permanently employed.' Paul Morris, a casual academic and NTEU member, told us about the impact that repeated short-term contracts have on his life: 'It creates anxiety which persists as a matter of course in my everyday life and intensifies each Christmas when I again become unemployed, leaving me wondering whether I will pick up again in another three months.' If the perpetual insecurity wasn't enough, academics are paid inadequate piece rates which leave them with pay well below the award. Our universities are built on insecure work and wage theft, two issues which so often go hand in hand. This is an unacceptable way to treat the people who are driving innovation and research in Australia and who we entrust with educating our next generation.

The story is the same at the National Broadband Network, where one government agency, Nbn Co, has exclusive power over everyone working within their supply chain. Like the NDIS, the NBN was a massive Labor achievement that was intended to create hundreds of thousands of secure and well-paid jobs, but this government has turned it into a hive of insecurity and exploitation. There is not a single NBN Co employee installing or maintaining NBN infrastructure. There's not even a single NBN Co subcontractor installing or maintaining NBN infrastructure. Instead, NBN Co has outsourced the entire project to a small number of contracting companies. Many are in turn subcontracting the work down the pyramid. At the very bottom of the Ponzi scheme, you have NBN technicians who some days cannot even earn enough to cover their costs. As the CEPU's Shane Murphy told us:

A project that was to be a source of pride has developed the highly sinister underbelly of mistreatment and malfeasance that should be a source [of] shame.

The federal government has the power to say, 'No, any job we pay for must be a secure job.' But all the evidence provided to this committee shows that this government, over eight years, has opted for an insecure, unpaid workforce which often falls victim to wage theft. If you ask neglected aged-care residents or university students or NBN customers, I think you'll find they aren't too thrilled either.

Even the Australian Public Service, once the standard-bearer of good, secure jobs, isn't safe from attacks on workers' rights. The proportion of casuals in the APS is at a record high. Expenditure on outsourcing APS jobs is at a record high. Expenditure on labour hire in the APS is at a record high. Nick Thackray, a CPSU delegate and long-time labour hire worker at the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, told us:

… there's the difference in pay, but then we don't get sick leave, … we don't get carers leave and we don't get things like domestic violence leave. Or if somebody close to you dies, there's no leave like that. So … every day, depending on what's happening in your life, you make the choice, 'Am I going to get paid today?'

I'm very happy to say that, shortly after appearing at our hearing, Nick was offered direct employment at AMSA. It's a great outcome for Nick, but it's also a great outcome for AMSA, who told us it costs them 23 per cent more to hire someone through labour hire, although the workers are getting paid less.

Unfortunately, we can't invite every labour hire worker in the APS to our hearings to help them obtain direct APS jobs; that responsibility does lie with the government. The government could give all these long-term labour hire workers a direct APS job today, just as the government could provide security to every worker in aged care, the NDIS, higher education and the NBN—today. Insecure work in these industries is a choice by the Morrison government. The eight years of rising job insecurity and record-low wage growth is a choice by the Morrison government. Minister Cormann himself said in 2019 that it's a 'deliberate' policy of this government, and there's no escaping the truth, that the Australian middle class no longer has the secure jobs and living wage that once defined it.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Select Committee on Job Security's second interim report, on insecurity in publicly funded jobs. The Greens welcome the tabling of this interim report, and generally we concur with the recommendations as well. During this inquiry, we have engaged with witnesses from a huge range of industries, organisations and parts of our community. I too thank the members of the committee, but especially the committee secretariat, without whose excellent work we would never be able to produce such insightful reports.

I want to take the opportunity this evening, though, to focus on higher education and reflect a little more on what this report has revealed about the insecure work crisis in our universities. The report provides a very damning summation and analysis of this crisis. It doesn't mince words. But I also want to reflect a little bit on the depth and seriousness of the situation.

A couple of weeks ago, the Commonwealth Fair Work Ombudsman had some very strong words for Australia's universities, pointing to instances of large-scale systemic underpayment of employee wages, particularly the wages of casual academics and professional staff. Ombudsman Sandra Parker pointed particularly to piece-rate-style performance benchmarks that may well be in breach of enterprise agreements. The Fair Work Ombudsman is now investigating 14 universities over potential underpayment and wage theft matters. This has expanded significantly over the past year or so. I began referring universities to the Senate Economics References Committee's inquiry into underpayments around the middle of last year. At this time last year only five universities were being or had been investigated by the ombudsman. That list had expanded to 8 by April of this year. Now there are 14. This list tells us that this situation is out of control. What's worse is that most universities are continuing to wipe their hands of it and to dismiss the systemic and serious nature of the underpayments.

Casual workers, and particularly women, who are overrepresented as casuals, are bearing the brunt of this wage theft. That has been allowed to flourish almost completely unchecked until now. Casualisation and wage theft are inextricably linked. The impacts of casual, insecure work are devastating. In evidence given to the committee, the University of Sydney Casuals Network provided testimony from casual academics on sector job prospects after the pandemic is over. One said, 'I'm thinking more and more that academia won't be a viable career option.' Another said, 'There is incredible uncertainty about my future employment, which leaves me worried and not particularly productive.' Another points to how this state of affairs will contribute to the loss of a generation of early career researchers and PhD students who have worked tirelessly for institutions that have failed to recognise their contribution. Workers can't plan their futures. They are questioning why they bother. They are in many ways completely lost. How can this go on in one of the wealthiest countries in the world? It was the committee's view in this report, which I wholeheartedly echo, that an increase in casualisation in our universities over the last few decades is not a result of the seasonal nature of university semesters. It is a feature of cost-cutting and the corporatisation of the sector. Insecure workers are cheaper and easier to get rid of, and over time, exploitative work force practices such as piece rates have become the contractual norm.

So what can be done? To begin with, our universities are in desperate need of a massive investment of public funding. There has been funding cut after funding cut over decades by successive governments. The Liberals job-ready graduates reforms, combined with the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to utter crisis and even more devastation. A recent Centre for Future Work report, which identified as many as 40,000 jobs lost over 12 months, was about the grimmest reading you could imagine on the state of affairs for the future of higher education in this country. We need a serious injection of new money directly into teaching, learning and research. Linked to this, though not within the remit of this report, is an overhaul of university governance. The corporate university has, and it pains me to say this, been built by neoliberal corporate university management. Only by radically shaking up who runs our universities will we be able to structurally shift the balance of power away from the managerial class back to staff and students over the long term. This is a big task for university communities, but one that is absolutely essential.

This report also contains some other useful recommendations. There should be much clearer reporting requirements with respect to employment statistics and headcounts of permanent, fixed term and casual staff. It recommends that the government require universities to set publicly available targets for increasing permanent employment and link this to funding. It recommends improved rights of entry for trade unions. All of these are very useful initiatives and some the Greens have proposed strengthening in our additional comments.

I want to reflect very briefly on the public sector component of this report as well. This report does paint an alarming picture of ongoing casualisation and outsourcing within the Australian Public Service. It identifies that evidence provided to the committee indicated that the number of non-ongoing employers is currently the highest it has been over the last two decades and that consultants and contractors are receiving more and more Public Service work. Let's be clear: this is not a problem confined to the federal Public Service. It is a disease purposefully spread by modern neoliberal government. It impacts practically all Australian jurisdictions. In my state of New South Wales, the past 10 years of the state coalition government has seen an enormous increase in outsourcing of consultant work. The consequences of this, again, are terrible. There is the clear and obvious consequence of the workers whose once secure public sector jobs are now being slowly but surely replaced by casual and non-ongoing staff and external contractors, but there are systemic problems for the public service more generally. The quality of work diminishes as institutional knowledge and expertise evaporates and the government can no longer stand on its own two feet.

The report makes some useful and commendable recommendations aimed at addressing the state of affairs. I'm looking forward to future hearings of this inquiry. It has been a pretty long inquiry, with dozens and dozens of witnesses, but we need that to address this massive issue of increasing insecure work. I hope that a final report can make recommendations that make sure that insecure work becomes part of history, as workers in all sectors are paid fairly and treated fairly. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Senate Select Committee on Job Security's second interim report also. Firstly, I would like to thank the committee chair, Senator Tony Sheldon, and my fellow committee members for the incredible work that everyone is doing on this committee. I would also like to acknowledge the witnesses that have contributed evidence from their own lives, evidence that has been absolutely crucial to the writing of this interim report—in particular, the United Workers Union, the Australian nursing and midwifery union, the Australian Health Services Union, the Health Workers Union and all of the dedicated workers who've shared their stories with us.

The crisis of insecure work is right at the heart of the ongoing crisis in our aged-care system. Australians know the value of our essential aged-care sector and they know the value of the thousands of aged-care workers, nurses, personal care workers, cleaners and catering workers who keep our aged-care system running. The millions of Australians who depend on the care sector know firsthand the importance of these frontline professionals, but the aged-care sector is in crisis—a crisis exposed by the royal commission, a crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that has us facing a workforce shortage of over 100,000 workers over the next 10 years and a crisis that has been ignored for eight years by this Liberal-National government.

The crisis in aged care is fundamentally a crisis of insecure work. On this committee, we have heard damning evidence of the prevalence and impact of insecurity in the aged-care sector. We heard that overreliance on insecure work practices is basically a business model in aged care. It's a business model which means workers are left desperate, with little choice but to accept work across multiple employers to make ends meet. It's a business model which impacts on the quality of care for vulnerable people in the aged-care sector. Ray Collins from the Health Workers Union told the committee:

… it suits the business model to keep me as a worker lean and mean. You give me the minimal hours you can give me. You manipulate the hours and the workers to suit your dollar needs, not your care needs.

Insecure work in the aged-care sector takes the form of low pay and low-hour part-time contracts. It's a system that provides flexibility for employers at the expense of employees. We found aged-care workers are hired on part-time contracts with guaranteed hours as low as just several hours per week, and any hours over that are not guaranteed and any extra hours they are given don't attract overtime or penalty rates. While the majority work above their minimum hours, they can't count on those hours. They can't count on them to put food on the table. They can't count on them to prove their hours to get a rental agreement or a mortgage.

And then there is the chronic low pay on top of the short hours worked, which we heard is a result of systematic undervaluation of care work as 'unskilled women's work'. Professor Sarah Charlesworth, from RMIT, explained how gender discrimination has led to undervaluation and work insecurity. She said:

This gendered nature of job insecurity is underpinned by a lack of value accorded to the work and the workers who perform it, which draws on a view of aged care as something women do for free and are therefore unskilled and is therefore not quite work.

This system of chronic low pay and low-hour contracts leaves these essential workers desperate, in a constant limbo, not knowing how many hours they will work each week, not knowing how they will be able to afford to pay their bills, and unable to properly plan their lives. We heard from workers across the sector about the impacts of insecure work on their health and on their families. Anu Singh, an aged-care worker, told the committee:

'Apprehension', 'self-doubt', 'stress',' unscheduled', 'instability'—for me these words define the job insecurity that we actually go through all the time.

Paul Bott told the committee:

I'm renting with my wife and three kids. Trying to live on two shifts a week just doesn't quite cut it.

Taking jobs with low wages and a lack of stable hours is not a choice that workers are freely making, because it isn't a choice. Insecure jobs are all that is on offer for these workers in this sector. It is built in, and baked in, to our aged-care system in Australia today. These essential workers deserve so much more.

The committee heard that it's not just workers who are impacted by this insecurity, but also the millions of Australians who depend on the care sector. No-one can deny the tragic consequences of insecure work in the aged-care system throughout the pandemic. There have been over 700 confirmed COVID-related deaths in Australian government subsidised aged-care facilities. The committee heard that, during this time, large numbers of aged-care workers were working across multiple sites to make ends meet, and this avoidable situation was found to significantly contribute to the spread of COVID.

And, outside of the pandemic, the committee heard that insecurity and casualisation of the care-sector workforce consistently leads to a reduction in the quality of care. Lloyd Williams, national secretary of the Health Services Union, outlined the problem for residents. He said:

It creates a lack of continuity of care. Can you imagine what it would be like to have a different person coming into your home and showering you every day?

Melinda Vaz, an aged-care worker, described the impact of inconsistent staff on residents suffering from dementia. She said:

On every shift, I never know who is going to turn up, how many staff are going to turn up and the experience they will have. I work in a dementia wing, and it's extremely important to have familiar staff because they know the people and they know the care needs of each person.

We cannot deliver the high level of quality care that Australians deserve without fixing the crisis of insecure work in aged care. That crisis is present across the broader care sector, including disability care as well. The committee found that workers in the care sector face unique challenges in addressing these issues in their workplaces. Care-sector workers can't simply sit down and win secure jobs, facility by facility, one by one. There are thousands of aged-care providers—some big, but most small. There are thousands of disability providers, and it is just an impossible task. If these workers, these essential dedicated workers, make it to some form of bargaining table to sit down with their employers, the response is that there's no money for better pay and more secure jobs because the funding just isn't there. That's because the people who set the funding, the federal government, are not required to be in those conversations listening to workers. Carolyn Smith, of the United Workers Union, said:

We're not talking to the people who hold the purse strings. What happens, and we've seen this over the last five years with freezes to the funding model, is providers will say to us, 'We want to do this but we just don't have the money.'

So workers are locked out of fighting for secure jobs and better wages across the aged-care sector. The system is just broken for them, and it's leaving them in these low-paid and insecure jobs. The committee found that we can't fix insecure work in the care sector without a system where care workers, their employers and the government can come together and decide on solutions. Employers, peak bodies and unions all agreed that meaningful solutions can only be delivered if everyone is in the room and if everyone is at the table where workers' voices are heard and where quality care is prioritised over profit—real solutions that will ensure these essential workers are paid what they deserve and have the good, secure jobs they need to support themselves and their families, because this isn't work that they just do for the love of it; this is highly skilled and critical work that our country is increasingly relying on. Our dedicated care workers deserve to be respected, they deserve to be valued and they deserve to be heard, and, throughout this committee, their voices were heard loud and clear by the senators participating. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute some remarks in relation to the Select Committee on Job Security's second interim report and to build on the comments made by my colleague Senator Faruqi about the impacts on the Public Service. I too would like to commend the work of the committee and the excellent report that they've tabled that we're speaking to now.

It's no surprise that successive governments have privatised our public institutions and have outsourced our essential public services over decades. The APS commission data shows a significant growth in non-ongoing contracts for employees under the Public Service Act of 1999 over the past decade. Evidence to this inquiry has laid bare that outsourcing and contract work has resulted in more expensive, lower quality and less transparent service delivery, which has resulted in a gutting of the capabilities within the public sector, and employees being paid less and having less job security and less job satisfaction. Efficiency dividends have actually reduced efficiency, and in-house capabilities have also been reduced by increasing reliance on ad hoc external recruitment. Staffing caps have not reduced overall staffing expenses, but they have eroded staff security and retention. The 2021-22 budget allocation to increase staffing levels was very welcome, albeit very late, and it was a recognition that years of cuts, privatisation and dodgy outsourcing deals have not worked. But the announced increases are not enough to undo the decade of ideologically driven cuts and outsourcing. Rebuilding staffing levels and strengthening job security within the Public Service is what we need to ensure that Australia has high-quality services at a lower cost to the public and a better deal for workers. We strongly support the recommendations in the interim report directed at achieving that outcome.

In relation to the loss of skills and capacity, the CPSU told the inquiry that labour hire and consultants regularly undertake work that should be core public service business, and, as outlined in the report, they believe that this has eroded the skills base within the Public Service, it's compromised service delivery, it's undermined job security and it has effectively 'abandonment of its role as the custodian of a career public service and the institutions and norms which Australian democracy relies upon'. The final report of the independent review of the Australian Public Service, I might point out, made similar observations.

The Australia Institute report Talk isn't cheapest estimates that the $1.1 billion spent by the Australian government last year on consultancies could have provided secure employment for more than 12,000 public servants and built the ongoing capacity of the public service to meet future challenges. Yet the government has continued to rely on labour hire and to outsource key advice roles to private consultants who do nothing for internal capacity building. Private consultants are often selected on the basis that they'll align with government objectives, they'll tell ministers what they want to hear or they will avoid rubbishing government policy for fear of missing out on future lucrative government contracts.

It's no coincidence that the consultancy firms that are making millions from government contracts are also significant political donors. EY, Deloitte, PWC and KPMG have donated $4.7 million in the last decade. An analysis by the Saturday Paper of contracts published on AusTender between 21 January and 21 October—just nine months—revealed that Deloitte raked in $212.3 million in contracts, EY took $190.7 million and KPMG nabbed $170.6 million. Further, both the terms of consultancy contracts and the advice provided to the government under those contracts are exempt from disclosure under freedom of information laws. This puts a range of significant policy advice out of sight of the public, and that's a trend that's likely to worsen with the government's unjustifiable extension of cabinet exemptions to any advice provided to any committee of national cabinet.

It's clear that the hollowing out of Public Service capability creates a vicious circle that facilitates an ongoing reliance on outsourced policy advice, less accountability and an inherent increased risk of corruption. It has to stop. Australia deserves a strong, independent Public Service that's capable of meeting the education, housing, health, social security, environmental protection and infrastructure needs of our nation. The Greens support the recommendations in this report that call for insourcing of core work and limiting the use of contractors and consultants. We will continue to call for greater transparency of work that's undertaken by consultants to improve public oversight of the calibre, the objectivity and the value for money that's provided by outsourced advice.

In relation to employee conditions, job security is a key factor in employee satisfaction and retention. The inquiry heard very disturbing evidence of public servants working back-to-back contracts but unable to get finance to buy a house on the basis that their role was considered insecure. This is not a situation that dedicated public servants should find themselves in. The CPSU noted the debilitating impact of the ASL policy:

It's not a limit on how much work is done, or how much money is spent, or even how many people can do work on behalf of the government—it's only a limit on secure employment.

The Greens support the recommendation to prioritise ongoing positions over repeat short-term contracts to give employees the confidence and the financial security to plan for the future.

We also note that job insecurity compounds the existing constraints on public servants' freedom to express political views in their private capacity for fear that that will reduce the prospect of their contract renewal. Public servants need to be clear and confident that they can participate in public debate without it impinging on their jobs. In balance of power in the next parliament, the Greens will move to legislate to protect the right of public servants, in their private capacity, to engage in political advocacy, attend rallies, run for public office, participate in their union and represent or be elected to external organisations.

I have a last comment on gender. Given the significant investment of public resources in government contracts, procurement and supply chain policies actually provide great leverage to drive positive social outcomes, including encouraging diversity and closing the gender pay gap. For example, if the government was to set procurement targets for women-led and gender-equal businesses it could help those businesses to grow and could incentivise gender-equal employment practices. So we support recommendations 32 to 34 of the interim report in that regard. We further recommend that any supplier code of conduct sets expectations about gender equality and closing the gender pay gap, and that businesses that are tendering for government services must be able to demonstrate that they have complied with all Workplace Gender Equality Act reporting obligations.

We know this government are addicted to privatisation. We know they love sacking public servants and outsourcing the provision of what used to be publicly owned assets and services, but this report has shown it's not good value for money and it's ripping off both the public servants and the Australian community. It's time to end this obsession with privatisation and sacking workers and start investing in a strong, resilient and frank and fearless Public Service. The Greens continue to be dedicated to that outcome and we commend this report to the chamber.

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I believe that a number of senators have asked that they may continue their remarks. Is leave granted?

Leave granted; debate adjourned.