Casual Employment in Australia

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Introduction
Over the past decades, casual employment in Australia has become a phenomenon of great concern. With the soaring numbers of casual employment, the debates about the benefits and drawbacks of causal employment have become fiercer. Casualization is a very important form of employment in Australia, which has been protected by workplace law. The majority of casual labor force constantly contact with their potential employers to apply job and confirm the arrangement of working time from month to month, or even week to week. In term of wages, causal workers cannot get paid for the annual holiday leave. However, they can receive more paid than the full-time workers for the same working hours. In this essay, how casual employment is defined in Australia and casual employment trend in recent years will be introduced. This article will critically discuss the benefits and harms for both employees and employers in terms of growing casual employment in Australia.
Definition of casual employment
Casual employment is often connected with unpleasant working condition including irregular working hours, low wages, intermittent employment and employment insecurity. Casual employment is usually dubbed with as employment with few benefits and rights. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), casual employees are defining as the employees who cannot get paid for their sick leave or annual leave. This definition reflects the most important aspects of causal works (Buddelmeyer, and Wooden, 2011).
Casualization in Australia
Over the past decades, the number of casual employees increase sharply .as it is shown in Figure 1 , the size of casual employees only account for no more than ten per cent of the total workfor...

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...tion, 4th ed., The Federation Press. Sydney

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