Job quality and part-time work in the retail industry: An Australian case study

Abstract

This article focuses on the important issue of job quality in part-time work, using a case study of the retail industry in Australia. Part-time jobs in retail in Australia can be either ‘casual’ or ‘permanent’, and this division is often equated with a distinction between bad and good quality work. This article examines the salience of this equation. It reports on the findings from a survey of, and interviews with, part-time retail workers in relation to three aspects of part-time employment that have a direct relationship with job quality: under-employment; variation in hours and schedules; and employee control over working time. In comparison to casual part-time jobs, ‘permanent’ part-time jobs in retail enjoy a modicum of employment security together with increased regularity and predictability of hours. However, this does not ensure employee control over working-time arrangements. Hence, it is argued that the lines of fragmentation in part-time retail jobs spill over the division between permanent and casual status. This raises important questions about HRM strategies to improve the quality of part-time retail jobs.

Keywords:

• part-time work
• casual work
• job quality
• retail
• Australia
• decasualization

Acknowledgements

This article stems from a project, funded by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council (DP 0449771), that examines the quality of part-time jobs in Australia. It includes case studies of part-time work in retail, law firms, police and cleaning services. The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees who provided comments on the article. We would also like to thank the Victorian Branch of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association, Metcash, the Council of Single Mothers and Their Children, Victoria, and the Masters Grocers of Australia Victoria Limited for their help in finding survey respondents. We owe a debt of gratitude to the survey respondents and to the interviewees, all of whom generously gave of their time providing us with valuable insights.

Notes

1. Casual jobs are commonly understood, both at the level of labour regulation and at the level of practice in the workplace, as work without standard rights and benefits (Campbell 2004). For example, they lack access to paid annual leave, paid sick leave, paid public holidays, notice of dismissal and redundancy pay (O'Donnell 2004, pp. 8–9). The official statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) capture the practice of casual employment in a rough but reasonably robust fashion by distinguishing a group of employees who do not have access to paid annual leave and sick leave.

2. More detail on the regulation of different forms of employment in the varied retail awards and agreements is provided by Price (2004, pp. 86–98). She notes (2004, p. 92) that the introduction of enterprise bargaining since the early 1990s has led to a ‘broadening of the span of ordinary working hours, greater managerial freedom to vary working hours and a reduction in penalty rates attached to certain anti-social working times in exchange for higher rates of pay’. More recently, it has been linked with the spread of registered individual contracts known as Australian Workplace Agreements (Burgess, Sullivan and Strahan 2004). The latest piece of federal legislation (Work Choices) expands the reach of federal labour law, removes some surviving elements of employment protection, and sets a new, reduced set of minimum wages and conditions (Stewart 2006). It thereby opens up a multiplicity of ways in which retail employers can pursue cost reductions. At the moment, premium payments for non-social periods such as evenings, nights and weekends still apply in retail awards and agreements, although they have been eroded by the widening of the definition of ‘ordinary hours’. However, one likely consequence of the new regime is the end of such premium payments.

3. Twenty surveys were also distributed to mothers working in retail through various sources including the Council of Single Mothers and Their Children, Victoria, and the Masters Grocers of Australia Victoria Limited.