Casualisation of the workforce is a health hazard.
I am now in my twelfth year of employment as a sessional/casual academic, being employed this semester at The Real University as well as Bjelke-Petersen Memorial University of Suburban South-East Queensland.
Last semester I committed to a very heavy load of sessional/casual teaching and research assistance at Joh U – considerably heavier than in previous semesters. This was due, in part, to the relevant division of Joh U changing the basis on which casual tutors were to be paid for marking assignments. Rather than all non-contemporaneous marking being paid over and above our teaching contracts, it was decided that our non-contact hours in our contracts would be deemed to cover such assignment marking.
As a result my income in Semester 2 of 2006 was markedly down on previous semesters. Anticipating a similar prospect in Semester 1 2007, I took on an increased load of tutoring, and did not refuse urgent requests for (paid) help with research, in order to make up the shortfall.
Partly as a consequence of being over-extended and run-down, I contracted a respiratory illness not once (which is usual) but twice during the semester.
Now contemporary employers are on record as stating that they prefer their ailing employees, for reasons of workplace productivity, to stay home and fully recover rather than turning up to work ill, only functioning on one piston, and similarly afflicting their workmates. However, when I contracted the first of my two lergies, I continued to bravely front up to teach and research as needed. Probably not coincidentally, two of my colleagues in my corridor contracted bugs with remarkably similar symptoms to mine. Despite this experience, I soldiered on with my second lergy as well.
Why did I do this rather than staying home to recover?
Quite simply, being a casual employee I don’t get sick leave. If I’m absent from work due to illness, I don’t get paid. I do get a 23 per cent loading on my basic hourly wage in lieu of entitlements such as sick leave which I would receive if employed on a more secure basis. In theory part of that loading is supposed to constitute a satisfactory substitute for paid sick leave, in that presumably if I salted away the loading I would save enough to tide me over the periods of reduced or no pay due to illness. In practice it doesn’t work like that. Particularly in the period until the end of April, casual university staff need every dollar they earn each fortnight to fill the personal financial hole which develops over the summer. At at the times when I fell ill, when I did my sums I calculated that I would be, at least temporarily, seriously impecunious if I didn’t do the work I was contracted to do. So I soldiered on, and foul contagion spread.
At the time I was not alone in the capacity of carrier. One of the casual staff at my local pub had also contracted a lergy. Despite being visibly and audibly unwell she worked her evening shift – which included serving meals to customers – sniffling and coughing away. As a student living in expensive inner-city digs she needed the money from the shift because her Austudy on its own wouldn’t make ends meet.
It occurs to me that the labour economists among us could usefully investigate the negative effects on workplace productivity and community wellbeing of an increasingly casualised workforce soldiering on rather than convalescing, and see how they stack up against the supposed economic benefits of casual rather than more secure employment.
Speaking as someone who’s about to go to work at the same University and is suffering from the flu from hell everyone in Brisbane has been afflicted with, Paul, I can only echo your comments. Progressive employers who allow unlimited paid sick leave with medical certificates are on to something in the productivity stakes.
If you want to bring back obsolescent work practices, how about reviving Saint Monday? That’s a holiday and a hangover cure.
Universities are at the forefront of this emerging two-tiered system, with a core of permanent staff and an enormous host of casual and contract positions. In contrast to casual tutors and RA’s, permanent staff often have excellent conditions when it comes to sick leave etc. They are also more likely to be able to afford private health cover. Of course there are other trade-offs being made there, and I know that some permanent staff work 80-hour weeks at the height of the semester. It’s a striking bifurcation, and I wonder if it can possibly last?
Personally I basically get by on the fact that I very rarely get sick: my income this semester is guaranteed only by dumb luck. And of course, that luck could change. Bring on the unlimited sick pay w/ medical certificates say I.
Gandalf/Mark
I have to say those work conditions do sound hideous and very counter-productive. Every job I have ever had, has had a “if you are sick, don’t bring it here, take all the time you need to get better.” No notes or meeting with HR dragons. It just makes for a much more trusting and committed employee.
What John said.
Gandalf you’re an articulate, qualified person living in a booming job market. You therefore have the power to punish employers who don’t do the right thing by you by voting with your feet. Time for a career change mate.
Agreed John. I’ve found in those kind of situations, where you have some amount of security, it means you can forget about money long enough to really get into it. You become less calculating, and begin to take your eye off of other work and get involved in the project etc. It’s amazing how small the differences might be, and yet they make all the difference.
John Greenfield, those working conditions that you say sound “hideous” are the normal standard of employment now being dished out around Australia to every twenty-something and most thirty-somethings.
Most of my friends have not had a paid sick day or holiday in years.
And anybody who objects get labled with being a productivity-killing, union-loving, industrial dinosaur.
Complain to Joe Hockey or Tony Abbott or John Howard, and they’ll just tell you to be grateful you have a job. After all, Work Brings Freedom.
See, this is what they’re trading on, derrida derider, the two-tiered system means that you can get a ‘good’ job at a university if you stick it out. Of course the good job might turn out to be quite bad as well, but in different ways. If you vote with your feet the institution closes up, cuts you off. I think it’s because it’s a system in transition, and I hope it shifts one way or the other. This is similar to the way that workers in ‘caring’ professions are reeled in to doing huge amounts of unpaid work: although I think the decision to walk is much harder there, because you have kids or patients etc that need you.
Mercurius, I think you make a good point as well. I have a lot of friends in their twenties moving around from casual position to casual position in the service industry, without any prospects of decent conditions.
You are an adult and you make your own choices. Nobody forces you to do any of these things. If you don’t like it then change what you are doing.
I guess if you are particularly infectious you should NOT spend a bit of time near the executive personal assistants and receptionists talking about how ill you feel and whether or not you should go home! Uncontrollable sneezing near areas where people gather (photocopiers, printers, etc) is also a BAD place to spend time.
Knock out the personal assistants and receptionists in each department (so the photocopiers stay jammed, etc), then it’ll only take a couple of days for the place to grind to a halt.
If the executives are knocked out with the flu for a week, there isn’t much damage to the business.
“You are an adult and you make your own choices. Nobody forces you to do any of these things. If you don’t like it then change what you are doing.”
Wow, thanks for the insightful commentary Razor. I am interested, though, in the interests of making this an exchange, as opposed to a drive-by, who is the ‘you’ in your comment?
It’d be a hoot if one of Razor’s employees brought an infection into his work place and germed up everybody.
Dave and Spiros, surely you are advocating bio-terrorism!?
I should warn you: this conversation may end up being used as ‘evidence’ in a trial-by-media situation at some time in the future.
Mercurius
You should be directing your protest elsewhere. I did not vote for Howard, and have posted dozens of times against Workchoices and against the ALP’s abandonment of “labour.”
There is a serious point here, which is that even if you accept Razor’s contention that people can make their own choices on where they work, so if you to choose somewhere with no sick leave and you get sick then tough titties for you, people don’t want to be infected by others in the work place
So, no sick leave = people come in sick = infect colleages and customers.
How is that good for any business, school, etc?
With sick leave, the boss can reasonably tell a sick employee to go home, for their own sake and everybody else’s. But I don’t think it’s possible even under Work Choices for a boss to order a sick employee home if it means they don’t get paid. (Perhaps the lovely Barbara Bennett could clear that one up.)
Razor is right, Gandalf, you have choices.
Your choices include Hobson’s, Buckley’s and none.
——
If you’re sick, you can…
…choose to come to work and make everybody else sick and take three times as long to recover because you’re not at home resting and spend half your wages on pharmaceuticals that you pay for out-of-pocket.
…choose to stay at home & not get paid and then get fired because your contract requires you to be at work.
…choose to stay at home, join a union to protect your job & then mysteriously not have your contract renewed.
…choose to stay at home, resign, go on the dole, find you have to work for the dole, choose not to work for the dole, lose the dole, get evicted & live on the street.
…choose to resign, go on the dole, find you have to work for the dole, get a job that has no sick leave, then get sick…(repeat choices above)
——
But nobody’s forcing you. That’s the most important thing – that we all have choices. Choices are the fruit of freedom. Don’t they taste sweet. Aren’t you feeling nourished and sustained by the wholesome goodness of choices? You ungrateful bastard. At least you have job you can choose to get yourself fired from.
Anyway, it’s your fault for choosing to get sick. So stop whingeing and get back to work.
Razor
I support your championing of liberty!
OR agitate politically to achieve your ends.
No chance of me infecting anyone around the photocopier today – it’s broken, like most things at universities.
In the UK, EU employment law means that university staff cannot be on rolling short-term contracts for more than four years. After that time, the university must make a case that the job is no longer required (e.g. a project has come to an end) or make the staff member permanent. The union is very militant (as I have learned to my great benefit) and really works hard to get people off casual short term contracts.
Am inclined to the belief that by the time symptoms are apparent, the infecting of others has already happened. Forcing people to stay away from work when ill has no effect. If there is a bug around, we all get it anyway.
Having to make sick people stay away has never been a problem I have faced. Most people are considerate. If they are too crook to work, or are exhibiting blatant symptoms (ie, coughing, sneezing etc) they stay away anyway.
Epidemiology is obviously not your strong suit.
Some diseases, such as measles or mumps, are infectious several days/weeks before symptoms are apparent. Other illnesses, like The Plague, are directly contagious as soon as symptoms are apparent and result in death within hours. Many other diseases have different vector patterns somewhere between the two.
Unless you know exactly what organism you/your cow orker has been infected with, you have no idea how their symptoms relate to the level of contagion. However, respiratory illnesses are notoriously likely to be directly contagious through air droplet dispersal, which is the exact opposite of not being contagious once the symptoms are apparent.
Agree with you Tigtog.
Next time there is measles or the plague infecting my workplace, instead of the “wog” or the “flu” or some “bug”, I’ll treat the entire readership of this site, including unverified lurkers, to a night on the slops.
“Most people are considerate.”
But SATP, the whole point of this post is that being ‘considerate’ becomes impossible when you need the money to survive, and don’t get sick pay.
And why should anybody get “sick pay”? Being paid to not work, hmmm.
Spiros – I actually pay for my employees to get Flu shots if they want them, give them time off to go to get it and pay any Medicare Gap on the consult. I also send anyone home who looks remotely infectious. It is just good business.
I’ve been giving one of my employees time off and flex time to look after her sick dog at the moment.
I must be a real prick of an employer!
Colds are infectious well into the period when people exhibit symptoms. That is why it is bad form to sneeze all over others.
Steve – yes, sick pay is not about working but about retention. My brother-in-law had an employee who came off his motor bike and shattered a leg. Months off work, but he paid him a reduced wage once his sick leave ran out, so that he could keep hold of him (he is a welder) and put him on office duties as soon as he was able to drop in to work.
This all depends on the outlook of the employer and whether the employee is worth keeping hold of.
So, paid sick leave is definitely off the table at your pub then, SATP?
Razor, you sound like a model employer. Got any work for someone with a Communications degree?
Good for you Razor. You are evidently a smarter employer than SATP who doesn’t want his employees to get any sick leave or any kind of leave.
Why anyone would want to work for SATP, especially in today’s labour market, I cannot imagine.
Spiros admits to having no imagination. No surprise there.
Paid sick leave has always been on the table Adam. It is illegal in this country to not pay it.
But unlike Razor you only pay it because of the law says you have to do so.
I don’t know that the booming jobs market helps all that much. I know highly paid IT contractors that have been looking for permanent jobs for years with no luck. Being sick is not really a problem for them as they are paid well and don’t live paycheck to paycheck. The job market is doing well but that does not mean that permanent jobs and sick leave is easy to get. Even they have periods of unemployment between contracts which they are unable to enjoy because even though they don’t have to worry about the groceries they still have mortgages, and every week or month out of a job means makes it that much harder to get the next one.
Hey, Guys – Steve runs a pub. Having worked a few bars when I was at Uni I understand where he is coming from. My business is a lot different.
Adam – you would be bored out of your tiny mind (Iam actually advertising on Seek at the moment for Admin Assistants). My advice – start your own business. Live on cabbage and mince for few years, but once it is going you are your own boss – you hold the key to your destiny. I will never work for someone else again!!! I love it. Should have done it a decade before I did.
Now I get to come and stir the pot at LP while in the Office and no-one can tell me off. (except the wife!)
Spiros, if you want to know something, I am more than happy to explain it.
However from experience I know it is pointless explaining something to someone who has a chip on their shoulder. You are predjudiced to a degree where you are making unprompted assumptions about me. Calm down
Steve, I’ll take your “I’ve got no arguments left” and raise it with
“I’d rather not eat at a pub where the kitchen hand, who should be at home sick but isn’t because the boss disapproves of sick leave, sneezes all over the parma”.
But, really, if you want to act like a character in The Grapes of Wrath, it’s your call. Eventually the only employees you will have left are those so bad, they can only get a job with you. Your customer service will then go down the toilet, one thing will lead to another and you will be posting as Steve at the Centrelink.
Do yourself a favour Steve. Become an employer of choice, like Razor.
So, you’re actually undermining my point while claiming to agree with me. Passive-aggressive sometimes, aren’t you? What epidemiology are you relying upon for your statement?
Generally, the most common unspecified wog/flu/bugs come in two flavours, respiratory or gastrointestinal infections, mostly viral but also at times bacterial. The typical infection vector is through shedded viruses/bacteria contained in bodily discharges (sweat, mucus, pus, phlegm, sputum, excretions) and/or exhalations which are then inhaled/ingested/absorbed by others. When one inhales/ingests/absorbs the infectious organisms one is infected but asymptomatic and non-contagious for the refractory period (where the organism multiplies in the host until discharges of shedded organisms are produced from host body tissues).
Producing various nasty discharges is what the symptoms of the most common wog/flu/bugs are. It is simply not true that workers with the common respiratory and GI wog/flu/bugs are likely to have infected others before they are symptomatic, because the symptomatic discharges (including coughs etc) are the vector of the disease.
Symptomatic workers with the common respiratory and GI bugs are highly infectious not just for their colleagues but also for customers. In a pub, that means fewer regulars coming in when they’re ill in bed instead. So infected workers will affect your bottom line if they don’t get sick pay.
“Adam – you would be bored out of your tiny mind (Iam actually advertising on Seek at the moment for Admin Assistants). My advice – start your own business. Live on cabbage and mince for few years, but once it is going you are your own boss – you hold the key to your destiny. I will never work for someone else again!!! I love it. Should have done it a decade before I did.”
I’m already living on cabbage and mince, so it’d be pretty much the same from that perspective. I think that’s probably good advice. It’s certainly crossed my mind to go that direction if this academic caper doesn’t play out in a suitable fashion.
My work history is a bit like Gandalf’s. I’m somewhat better off than many in the lower of the two tiers of the academic workforce in that for the last three years I’ve had a succession of short term appointments. But each time my contract ends and a new one commences all my accrued sick leave disappears.
Fortunately I don’t get sick much.
Tigtog, a most interesting piece on infection, thank you. We can all learn something from your post.
Spiros, you seem to have all the answers. Perhaps you’ll take up the position of manager at the pub next door to me. Naturally you’ll have no problem attracting great staff and expanding the business outta sight. I’ll be wiped out.
The superior results you achieve will be landmark for the industry.
Er.. by applying your brilliant strategies for staff retention and customer satisfaction you will achieve superior results won’t you?
come on SATP, you well know that sick leave (or personal leave as it’s now called) is just factored into the gross annual wages & as per the budget, there should be an item for temp. staff based on previous year(s).
if your employees DONT get sick as per previous years, it’s icing on the cake, not the other way around. unless you have an abnormally high rate of staff sick and for a long time for the current year – then it should be well covered.
if you’re not putting together a good budget nor doing any forecasting and costings etc – then you’re not doing your job as manager/owner.
having sick/contagious employees spreading the love to other staff – is false economy.
razor seems to be on the job – providing flu shot etc – is savvy business practice.
.
The principal at the school where my wife teaches adopted this policy. Last week he had 8/11 teachers away, sick with the flu that is devastating Brisbane. It is a very potent bug.
I work outside and hardly ever get sick. The disadvantage is that I get paid by the hour and when I had 10 weeks off last year with a prostatectomy no-one paid me a red cent.
Brian,
re: 8/11 teachers away with the flu….
i am forever asking people if they mean a cold, or a virus, and question them about other symptoms…usually, it’s a cold or virus.
the flu vaccine is to prevent morbidity pre-dominantly, not sure of the rates of disease prevention, but i’d guess fairly high compared to non-vaccinated population and much reduced symptoms etc.
i’ve been a ’stand back from people coughing and cover my face’ type for years – you’d think people would take the ‘germ theory’ more seriously – today, i went to buy a bread roll and the girl serving coughed right into her hand – a really nasty deep cough and served bloke in front of me. i walked off and waited until i got home.
Other than 5-8 days sick leave, (then using up your A/L) – most workers, unless privately insured for income protection, aren’t covered for a long period of illness, and nowdays you have to be really poor to qualify for sickness benefit. otherwise, you are supposed to live off your savings…
sorry, i completely forgot about accumulated sick leave…….wipe everything i’ve said so far, which you’ve probably have anyway.
I reduced my research work whilst marking the minor essay thinking that the thirty three hours it was supposed to take me to mark 100 essays would be paid for. Thankfully, the other assignments were paid for separately to the paid hours for “tutorial preparation”.
Today I missed out on payment for a significant block of research assistance because the timesheets reached payroll a couple of hours late (their deadline is 10am on a Monday morning 10 days before the payment date… go figure). Going to make my submissions on a friday from now on.
Jo: Your 11:04pm post is.. er.. interesting. I don’t quite understand what you are on about.
I have no idea what you mean in this context by “budget” and “factoring in”, nor by “forecasting” or “costings”. I get lots of unsolicited financial advice, much of it pointing out how badly run my operation is.
Getting sick & taking “sick leave” have little connection to each other.
My propensity to ask obvious malingerers for a “medical certificate” if they have a day off “sick” has done more to reduce illness than any immunisation programme ever could.
Have never heard the expression “personal leave” as a substitute for “sick leave”. Will keep an eye out for it. I have a low tolerance for bull sheet, so quite probably nobody is game to try that one on me.
As an aside, I become quite suspicious of anyone who takes significantly more sick days than I do. Except when I caught sars a few years, I haven’t had much time off sick. My secretary has proudly never had a sick day since she has worked here.
OH Please! Got to be the wildest and most inaccurate claim ever made.
jo, thanks for that. The dead tree version of the Courier Mail has two stories on the front page today – the Minneapolis bridge disaster and the deadly flu bug which has killed a 4-year old boy. GPs please note that the story tells of four deaths in Perth last month
Some doctors think that if it’s viral there is no need for antibiotics. An old doctor I used to see a few years ago who retired at age 90 because he was starting to feel a bit tired used to give you antibiotics to clean up the associated bacterial infections to leave your immune system have a clear shot at the virus. Sounded good to me.
If pay is really so low, and conditions so grim in academia, presumably there are too many people after too few jobs? Permanent jobs anyway. Why don’t some of you try your luck in the private sector – you ought to be suited to marketing and client relations roles – even if you have no technical or financial training.
I dont know what Gandalf’s base hourly pay is, but 23% loading “in lieu of sick leave and other entitlements” seems fairly substantial. Surely poor old Gandalf isn’t sick more than 23% of the time?
Perhaps I’m genetically gifted, but I dont think I have ever had “the flu”. Apart from hangovers I’ve only had to skip work about half a dozen times in about 25 years – and I’m not especially dedicated by private sector, management class standards. When people say they have the flu, abouy 90% of the time, what they really have is a cold
Adam Gall – you know what they say about Academics:
If you can’t do it – teach it.
If you can’t teach it – become an Academic.
Some doctors think that if it’s viral there is no need for antibiotics.
Correct.
Prescribing antibiotics where they’re not needed (as well as feeding them to pigs and chickens) creates resistance. Resistance creates superbugs.
Truculent patients who demand unnecessary antibiotics (I don’t mean you Brian, but there are a lot of them if some of the stories I hear are true) are helping to kill off the rest of us with their ignorance.
Yes, I know what they say
Adam Gall,
Re your comment “surely you are advocating bio-terrorism”
Nope, read again, noticing the words I put in capitals
I then explained the seriousness of those irresponsible actions. If there was an extension possible, it was that you should talk to the executives about feeling ill rather than their assistants.
I’ve got to be careful in what I say, as my training would make me an excellent terrorist if I had a violent streak
(1) Using restriction endonucleases for bacterial genetic engineering (classic biowarfare stuff)
(2) Starred in toxicology and oncogenesis (Poisoning people, causing cancer)
(3) Military weapons training (ok, 303s, SLRs and brens are a bit outdated)
(4) Asked to tech lead a 1980s project at Directorate of Electronic Warfare after teaching IT to guys working on JORN and Collins (I refused saying “I’ll build a shield but not a sword”, but had already been vetted including a fairly incompetent “burglary” and surveillance)
(5) Show knowledge of Islam by doing some reformatting on the wikipedia article “Similarities between the Bible and the Q’ran”. (But I’ve criticized those who read the Q’ran as condoning violence)
Yep. I made DARN sure I was saying spreading the flu was a bad thing. My file is thick enough!
Dave – are you aware that disclosing your personal security classification is an offence?
If you’ve been vetted then, as a minimum your are TS-NV, but it sounds like you probably needed a positive vetting, so you were probably much higher.
I wonder if the green slime look at this site?
Razor: Don’t know my classification as I was never told it!! Never had a job requiring flights to Adelaide since the “build you a shield not a sword” comment. And yes, electronic communications passing through Australian networks, voice or data, are scanned for keywords and flagged. Google Echelon at the European Parliament and happy paranoia!
Back on topic: it’s not just your own office that is the big deal: cramped public transport (e.g. victoria, fewer trains than a couple of years ago and 18% rise in passengers) affect a whole lot of people. So, if you public transport to work, given that coughing in a crowded carriage (you are trying to hold on, so your hands can’t reach your mouth in time), perhaps the sick leave should be paid for by the government as the benefits of not going to work are not limited to a definable workplace.
Dave Bath, what an untapped method of lifting the readership. Which words should we use?
I’ll work on a bit more overnight.
In my discipline, at Griffith we always paid extra for marking (ie the tutoring rate was seen purely as covering prep and delivery of tutes). I remember QUT did not – ie they took the hourly tutoring rate as including an hour of marking.
It’s scary to think UQ is taking the QUT road. And that such basic entitlements/expectations would be up to institutional interpretation, rather than a set rule.
Helen, concerning your comment in truth the old doctor may have thought there were particular circumstances.
In 1999 my wife and I and our young son went for the only ski holiday I’ve had in my life. The other two had been quite ill with the flu for a while and went to see the doc about a week before we were to leave. He prescribed antibiotics, they immediately recovered and had a great holiday in the snow.
I came down with the flu while we were driving down. The young doctor there told me just to stay inside the ski lodge and rest. Which I did.
All that doesn’t prove very much, but I hope the four who didn’t make it in Perth were not subject to the usual doctor’s reflex reaction and didn’t perhaps get the best chance.
Anti-biotics won’t kill a virus, but they will kill off any secondary infections that result from the effects of the virus infection.
“And why should anybody get “sick payâ€?? Being paid to not work, hmmm.”
Hmmmm I see one of the “Captains of Industry” stap is peddling the ol virtues of the “Laissez_Faire” of the capitalist world. You know Steve your postings have convinced me you were born in the wrong century. I see you as a mill manager in one of the cotton mills of Manchester in about 1870 or a leader of a press gang..Your a real Charles Dickens talking point. But you aint no apologist for Howard or his ilk are you Stevo?I near on piss my self with laughter when you go into your prove it routines tsk tsk.
Still your point does have some merits.You could improve productivity by(oh by the way steve in your industry does improved productivity mean pushing that last pint down some patron at the bar?)you could dock your workers wages for taking a piss or shit, what about saying good morning that should take all of five seconds a veritable shit load of savings there.Have you thought about keeping a stethoscope behind the bar? you could check that your employees are actually alive.
You really don’t get it do you Stevo? Your hero John Howard, if there is indeed a God, will get the sack for his attitude towards workers, and like you, his real thoughts and intentions are as clear as an expensive piece of crystal.
Is that pile of foul language, personal attack & talk of urinating onto yourself your way of refuting my point on “why should no work attract pay?”
Some improvement needed in your debating skills. Much improvement.
“Some improvement needed in your debating skills. Much improvement.”
Don’t flatter yourself,who do you think you are Rudyard Kipling?
Hehe Gaz, just as well there isn’t a breathalyser on your keyboard.
Talking of pissing onto yourself is a novel, but ineffective, way of countering a point.
You got nothin’, except at this time of night a high blood alcohol reading.
Au contraire Stevo it is you who works in a pub. And I am not going to debate the issue of sick leave, especially with a right winger like you.I am just giving your opinion on the matter the contempt it deserves.Of course you are entitled to an opinion,however one the draw backs of a democracy is, even toady’s have to have their say.
Keep it civil, please, gentlemen.