A genuine pathway for casual workers to become permanent

There are more than 2.73 million workers employed casually in Australia, the highest number ever.

Thanks to the passing of the Closing Loopholes Bill last week, soon every casual worker who has worked for their employer at least 6 months (or 12 months in the case of small business) will have the right to request to be made permanent.

This is a huge win for working people because we know that previously, more than half a million long-term casual workers wanted to convert to permanent work, but only 5% were successful.

Workers just like Toby, who will soon have a much clearer pathway to requesting to convert to permanent work.

Toby’s story

Toby is a casual tutor and a part-time primary school teacher. Since 2006, he has worked two jobs to ensure he has a regular income, which he finds difficult to manage.

He says, “two thirds of university staff are either casual or on fixed-term contracts; people just come and go… it’s a good job but many can’t deal with the insecurity”.

Toby says that he is one of the rare staff members in his workplace who is just managing to continue, but his academic career has been in a stalemate as his employer won’t invest in a professional pathway for him because he is casual.

This, he says, against a backdrop of “university chancellors earning over a million dollars, but they can’t give tutors permanent contracts”.

“There’s constant uncertainty… I’m a father of three teenage kids, and I work really hard and I have pride in my job. I just want to be permanent.”

Meaningful pathways to permanency

Soon Toby and other long-term casual workers will have a pathway to permanency, so they can benefit from greater job security and access to entitlements such as paid annual leave and paid sick leave.

In fact, according to the ACTU’s Closing the Casual Work Loophole report, of Australia’s 2.7 million casual workers, over 500,000 casual workers would prefer to be permanent, but only about 28,000 have been successful.

These changes will bring casual workers more rights, protections, and choices.

Closing casual loopholes

Part 2 of the Albanese Government’s Closing Loopholes Bill passed last week and is a huge win for working people.

The changes make a meaningful difference to the thousands of casual workers who work regular, ongoing hours – often for years – but find themselves stuck in insecure work because big business employers are exploiting the current legal loopholes.

If you believe in creating change that directly benefits workers’ lives, then it’s time to join your union.