During the GFC, workers who stayed in their jobs didn’t reduce their working hours, despite widespread govt and commentator claims that cuts in hours had helped stem job losses during the downturn, a new report has revealed.
Released on Nov 26, the Australia at Work report found “only small sections” of the workforce suffered negative impacts from the GFC and unemployment was not an “overwhelming feature”.
It found that while the lives of people who remained with the same employer stayed relatively unchanged or even improved, those who started a new job or changed employer felt the impact most keenly.
“The average working week remained at 44 hours per week, exactly the same level as the first two years of our survey,” the report said. “[We] found no evidence to support the contention that job losses have been mitigated by de facto work-sharing. The most significant change in work hours was experienced by those who changed jobs.”
Some 35% of those who changed jobs experienced a cut in pay. Workers who entered the job market or who changed jobs in the past year were also more likely than other workers to enter into precarious forms of employment, such as casual jobs without entitlements to paid leave, the report said.
Casual workers were much less likely than permanent employees to feel they could negotiate pay and were more reliant on awards, the report said. That presented a “major challenge” for the Fair Work Act in enabling them access to collective bargaining, it said.
