Exclusive: Greens want long term casuals and contract workers to have right to request secure work, backed by arbitration

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Fair Work Commission would gain new powers to order employers to create permanent jobs to replace casual employment and work on successive temporary contracts under a new Greens policy.

The Greens want to legislate to give casuals and employees on successive fixed-term contracts who have been in a workplace for more than 12 months a right to request secure and ongoing work.

Employees whose request for permanent work is refused would be able to ask the Fair Work Commission to order their employer to give them a permanent full-time or part-time job.

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The Greens’ policy would also allow unions and employer organisations to apply to the commission for orders that prospective employees, casual employees or those on rolling contracts be given permanent work.

The orders could apply to individual workers, groups or whole classes of workers in any industry, with any kind of work or type of employer. Small businesses with fewer than 15 employees would be exempt from the legislation.

The Greens’ industrial relations spokesman, Adam Bandt, will announce the policy on Friday in the inner Sydney electorate of Grayndler with the senator Lee Rhiannon and the Greens candidate Jim Casey, who is the state secretary of the Fire Brigade Employees Union.

The secure work orders have the capacity to shake up industries that use large numbers of casuals and employ workers on rolling fixed-term contracts, like the higher education sector.

Bandt said: “More and more people are under pressure because they don’t have a secure income or decent work.

“Rising job insecurity is affecting people’s ability to live and plan their lives.

“Young workers in particular are under immense pressure, with unaffordable housing, higher student debts and more young people in casual work than any other age group.



“People working for years as casuals or going from one fixed-term contract to another often struggle to take out a mortgage or even sign a lease.”

Under the plan employers could refuse requests for casuals or workers on rolling contracts to convert to permanent employment but would have to detail their reasons. That refusal could be overturned by the Fair Work Commission.

The commission would have to consider allowing employers to continue to use contract and casual labour where it is “genuinely appropriate having regards to the needs of the business”.

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Casey said: “Sydney is one of the most expensive cities in the world and the inner west is rapidly becoming so expensive that those who work here can hardly afford to live here.

“The rise of short-term and casual work is making it harder for people to afford to live in inner-west Sydney.”

Bandt said: “Polls are suggesting that a hung parliament is increasingly likely after this election. If the Greens hold the balance of power after this election, we will seek to place issues like tackling increasing job insecurity at the centre of the new government’s agenda.”

Bandt has also refused to rule out legislating to protect weekend rates should the commission cut penalty rates for retail and hospitality workers.

The Fair Work Commission is currently considering a case to cut Sunday penalty rates to Saturday levels in the retail and hospitality industries.

On Thursday the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said he did not support cutting Sunday penalty rates to Saturday levels but he would accept the decision of the independent tribunal.

At its national conference in July, Labor approved changes to its platform to “reduce the incidence of underemployment and insecure work” including by delivering “an objective test for determining when a worker is a casual”.