In order to increase the Department of Labour’s (DoL) knowledge and understanding of nonstandard employment arrangements and the impact that non-standard employment arrangements may have on both workers and employers, exploratory case studies have been undertaken in four industries; call centre, cleaning, labour hire and fish processing. It was also expected that precarious forms of employment may occur for some employees in these industries. The case studies provided an opportunity to gather information on precarious employment and to test a ‘working definition’ of precariousness developed by DoL in an earlier literature review.
In this study, we found many employees who were prepared to enter casual or temporary employment under a variety of terms to meet their needs. More employees in this study reported feeling overworked or underpaid or felt dissatisfied with their employment than reported experiencing their work as precarious.
Purpose
This research project was undertaken:
• to increase the Department’s knowledge and understanding of non-standard employment arrangements including casual, temporary, contract work and standard work and the factors that lead to some forms of those non-standard employment arrangements to be classed as precarious for an employee;
• to understand issues around the quality of work and work-life balance, and the impact that non-standard employment arrangements may have on both workers and employers, be that impact positive or negative. This included examining current and future choices and constraints facing New Zealand employers and employees in industries where non-standard work arrangements were identified as being prevalent;
• to gather information on precarious forms of employment and consider whether the ‘working’ definition of precariousness, as outlined in the literature review (Tucker1) is useful and appropriate in the New Zealand context.
This was an exploratory study intended to better understand the practices, behaviours and values of employees in non-standard forms of work at the level of their daily work and life. What forms of non-standard work might constitute precarious employment was expected to emerge from the cases studied. The study had no a priori definition of precarious work but selected industries and cases where it might be expected to be present given the definition adopted by the international literature.
The study was intended to identify areas of policy interest for the Department and areas for possible future research.