Casual University Work: Choice, Risk, Inequity and the Case for Regulation

By Anne Junor

Australian universities now have a casualisation rate near to, or higher than, the national average (depending on the definitions of casual used) amongst academic and general staff.

Junor looks at the reasons for this, and the impacts. An argument is developed for the role of industrial regulation in reconciling requirements for flexibility, security and equity in university employment. Responses to a large survey of casual academic and general staff suggest this employment mode is a minority preference. Appropriately targeted regulatory responses would include critieria-based caps, a general staff conversion mechanism, a work value review, access to increments and service entitlements, and workplace representation rights.

(Economic and Labour Relations Review. vol. 14, no. 2, January 2004)