More than 600 submissions were received by workers in an outreach effort coordinated by the Victorian Trades Hall. You can read online what these people have sent in; it’s sobering.



There are stories of underpayment, labour hire contractors who go missing, workers who lose all their shifts with no warning or reason despite knowing of new casuals brought into the workplace. Some workers are obliged to work regular hours and do so for years but are never transferred into a permanent position that would offer them entitlements to long service, sick and carers’ leave, paid holidays, stable hours or the basic security of an ongoing income.



There are workers who get text messages between 4am and 6am being told they have to get to work in an hour, workers denied safety training in unsafe environments and workers obliged to individually cover the cost of personal protective equipment such as goggles, gloves, shoes and high-vis clothing.



The anxiety felt by workers whose livelihoods are held hostage to insecure conditions has dangerous consequences – workers reporting that they are scared to report bullying, sexual harassment and dangerous safety conditions for fear their shifts will just be taken away. Perhaps the most horrific submission is one contributed in Mandarin, which does not need to be translated to be understood – it’s accompanied by a photo from a meat worker who has only two fingers remaining on his injured hand.



These unstable conditions are not just experienced by workers in manual industries like hospitality, retail, the food supply chain, warehousing or construction. The submissions come from industries that were once thought secure, where in decades past tertiary qualifications were supposed to mean a “job for life” – schoolteachers, nurses, public servants. Up to 40% of university staff are now in insecure work.



Cutting penalty rates would hit most vulnerable, unions warn



Why? A 2012 report compiled by the former deputy prime minister Brian Howe identified that “the key driver has been the emergence of a business model across the entire economy that shifts the risks associated with work from the employer to the employee, and minimises labour costs at the expense of job quality.”



If this sounds like a principle perhaps shared by someone who pledges to govern in the interests of “freedom, the individual and the market” while investing his money into companies like 7-Eleven, you’d be right.



It’s great to have Victoria staging an inquiry, but a national investigation is long overdue. Broader patterns of exploitation are occurring to the detriment of Australian living standards and they need to be addressed before a slowing economy places even further limits on Australian opportunity.



