Precarity in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Deteriorating security, wages and conditions of work were largely a sleeper issue in the 2017 General Election. Industrial relations surfaced only in the typically shrill, anti-union accusations by the National Party that Labour’s ‘Fair Pay’ agreements (industry standard agreements forming a floor under conditions in an industry) would take New Zealand ‘back to the national awards’ of the 1970s (they actually lasted until the 1980s). Little discussed was what had been lost through National’s 1991 Employment Contracts Act which overnight abolished the industry coverage awards provided and severely weakened employment security and conditions, collective bargaining and unions, nor did anyone discuss a broader range of policies proposed by both Labour and the Greens. Labour’s would firstly repair most of the holes in labour rights cut out by National during its nine years in office, and then bring in new laws.

The proposed new laws include the Fair Pay agreements which are intended in themselves to provide better conditions to all workers in an industry, but they also include reforms which would specifically start to address those issues of insecurity and increasing avoidance of responsibility by many employers through exploitative employment practices, contracting out, and forcing their workers into artificial contracting arrangements. For example, Labour promised that in its first 12 months in office it would begin consultation on improving minimum redundancy protection for workers affected by restructuring, introduce statutory support and legal rights for ‘dependent contractors’, address the ‘Hobbit law’ that removes most labour rights from workers in the film industry, and investigate measures that improve job security for people in precarious forms of employment. The Greens would ‘Improve rights and protection for casual, seasonal, fixed term and temporary workers’. These recognise the mounting concern about ‘precarious work’.

The concept of ‘precarity’ has been given a clear definition and conceptual basis by Guy Standing through numerous books, articles and public appearances. He provides a foreword to this new book, Precarity: uncertain, insecure and unequal lives in Aotearoa New Zealand, and is referred to in many of its chapters. Standing’s view is that it is a ‘new class’. He begins his foreword stating (p. 9):

The precariat is a structural feature of globalisation and is growing in all parts of the world, reflecting the impact of policies to make labour markets more flexible and open, and the impact of the ongoing technological revolution.

Governments, including New Zealand’s, have pursued social policies that have further expanded the precariat, in the ostensible pursuit of ‘competitiveness’. But they have done so in an inequitable way, by making labour relationships more insecure and uncertain.

This is rooted in labour relationships (I refuse to call these relationships a ‘labour market’: it is impossible to understand why we should be concerned about insecurity, inadequate pay and pay inequity – among other ubiquitous problems – if we frame it as a ‘market’). Standing is not concerned solely about employment relationships, but they define his new class. He defines the precariat in four dimensions: the insecure labour relationship, the reliance on wages (and lack of non-wage benefits), the loss of customary rights (he describes them as denizens), and a sense of relative deprivation with respect to time creating a sense of lost past, present or future.

In contrast, this book widens the scope of precarity well beyond labour relationships: food insecurity, domestic violence, older people, the impact of precarity on Māori (social services, health, young mothers and youth homelessness) and on migrants, particularly but not solely Pasifika, including refugees. Certainly, work impacts on these people and their communities: lack of work, low paid work, insecure work, unsympathetic employers, demeaning work, but many of the chapters go well beyond that.

The editors describe the objective of the book as follows in their introduction (p. 16):

Drawing on their different vantage points to inform their analyses, the authors share their respective experiences of researching, teaching, advocating and/or working with precariat individuals and groups. Each of the contributors does this with the aim of developing a more nuanced understanding of the precariat in Aotearoa New Zealand and providing pathways forward.

In this book, we turn our attention to this emerging class, the precariat, not to further vilify them, but rather to place their lived experience in plain sight. It is time all New Zealanders understood the reality of what many of our own citizens endure in the struggle to make ends meet and live dignified lives.

On the first objective, describing the precariat, the book does a well-informed, generally well-evidenced, at times passionate, job of describing these aspects of New Zealand society.

The weakness in extending the definition of precarity so far is exposed in the two quantitative chapters (A statistical portrait of the New Zealand precariat; and The Māori precariat: a silhouette by Cochrane, Hodgetts, Rua, Stubbs and Uerata). It is not to criticise the authors to say that these are partial and incomplete. The Portrait of the entire precariat finds fewer people than the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (2013) did in its report on insecure work, Under Pressure (for an update see Rosenberg 2017), which included only those at work or unemployed and not, as this does, those who are jobless (under a wider definition than only those meeting the strict official definition of ‘unemployed’) and beneficiaries. The Portrait found 606,000 compared to over 635,000 found by the NZCTU analysis. It acknowledges that it omits people in permanent jobs who are nevertheless insecure (in Under Pressure, those in permanent work where there was a medium to high chance of job loss in the next year). It does not consider the self-employed (which in the sense of a formal classification of employment may include many rural Māori, as well as dependent contractors, people on the edge of the workforce and workers such as Uber drivers). The self-employed are considered in Under Pressure but there was insufficient information to determine who should be classed as insecure. These omissions expose the inadequacy of New Zealand statistics rather than the efforts of the authors of those chapters. The numbers found significantly underestimate precarity as defined. It is difficult to design good policy if we do not have a reasonable idea of the numbers affected.

Statistics aside, the book is at its best in describing the situations of different sectors of precarity in our society. It is divided into three parts, each of which could be a standalone book, with its own introduction. They are tied together only by an overall introduction and conclusion. The first part, ‘Selling Snake Oil’ says its purpose is to demolish myths and to present alternatives. In its seven chapters, it does much better at the first than the second. The second looks at ‘Māori and the precariat’. I found this the most compelling part with well-researched, moving descriptions of the impacts of insecurity on vulnerable people. The final part, ‘Arrivals past and present’, focuses on migrants to New Zealand, mainly from the Pacific (including second- or third-generation descendants) and refugees. Again there are enlightening descriptions, this time of the difficulties migrants experience in adjusting to New Zealand society while still wanting to maintain their own culture and links to family in their countries of origin – or having to come to terms with the loss of them.

The chapters are short, which increases their accessibility, though the language is still frequently academic. The book is worth reading just for the insights the descriptions provide. In general, they are supported by research evidence. This mixture of accessibility and research-based evidence is at its best in Ware, Breheny and Forster’s chapter, Reproducing the precarious position of young Māori mothers in Aotearoa New Zealand. King, Rua and Hodgetts in How Māori Precariat families navigate social services use the historical context of the impacts of colonialisation to help us understand the barriers faced by Māori today in accessing appropriate social services. Chapters on the experience of Samoans – both well settled and recent migrants – gave me at least a real insight into the difficulties they face. Chapters on food insecurity and (aptly described) ‘penal welfare’ are heart-breaking.

But the book is disappointing in its second objective: ‘providing pathways forward’, if this meant alternative policies. Much of what is described is well known (but still is important to document): surely by now we must have some concrete ideas on the way forward? It is disappointing that there is no specific critique of the departed National Government’s ‘social investment’ policies which worsened ‘penal welfare’ and the position of community providers (including Māori and Pacifika) as described in a number of chapters. What should replace it? What would a welfare system look like whose primary aim was helping people to maintain their dignity through difficult times rather than forcing them into work to reduce costs to the government, demeaning and humiliating them along the way? How would we reduce the maze of agencies, many unsympathetic, that Māori and others face? What would be a more sustainable way to fund community providers? What would a better migrant induction and support system – particularly for Pacifika – look like? More fundamentally: how do we stop the constant flow of people into precarity?

As mentioned above, this book extends Standing’s concept of precarity well beyond labour relationships. Is this a good thing? On one hand, it is natural. ‘Precarity’ in the sense of living constantly on a cliff edge is not limited to employment relationships. In any case, many people who are precarious in their work move in and out constantly from (or are simultaneously in) the groups so well described in the book.

On the other hand, the extension is problematic if the intention is (as the introduction seems to say) to extend the definition of precarity in the sense of ‘this emerging class, the precariat’. Standing has a case to make that the precariat he has extensively documented, who are so poorly served by current labour relationships, are indeed a ‘class’ in the sense that they have a particular relationship to the production process, with some common economic interests. He encourages them to become conscious of those interests and take collective action as a class. History will tell whether this has some basis in reality, but it is certainly a defensible position which can be tested and debated.

But is it credible that this book’s extended group is a class? Or even more specifically, that it is part of Standing’s precariat, which ‘is a structural feature of globalisation … reflecting the impact of policies to make labour markets more flexible and open, and the impact of the ongoing technological revolution’. Many parts of it well preceded the globalisation in its current form which Standing refers to. Māori are the victims of colonialism going back at least to the early nineteenth century in Aotearoa/New Zealand and their plight was if anything more precarious on many occasions between then and the current ‘globalised’ era. Migrants (including Pacifika and refugees) have been coming to New Zealand and experiencing most of the problems described for years before the current era: the book describes the ‘dawn raids’ and other racism towards Pacific immigrants during the 1970s for example. Refugees have been coming to New Zealand since before the Second World War (my father was one). And of course, the settler colony brought migrants since the nineteenth century, some of whom would see common problems to those described in the chapters of this book: some returned home within months or a few years of coming here. Does this extended group have common economic interests with each other and with Standing’s precariat? To the extent that they are part of Standing’s precariat, of course they do, but not all necessarily are. They have a common interest in a well-functioning state and better funded and more empathetic welfare systems – but so does most of New Zealand society. So is a ‘precariat class’ a useful or accurate way to describe them?

This book has done New Zealanders a great service in bringing together descriptions of the precarious lives too many of us are forced to lead. I hope it is widely read. I also hope it will lead to work on practical alternative policies.