7. Scope for further work on this topic

This paper used data collected in the March 2008 Survey of Working Life to provide a general overview of temporary workers, their jobs and their conditions of employment. It focused particularly on the distinctive characteristics of casual, seasonal, fixed term, and temporary agency employees and their jobs. There are other ways in which the characteristics and employment outcomes of temporary workers could be usefully analysed, such as by age group. The implications of job characteristics such as low pay and variable hours may differ according to whether the work is undertaken by teenagers or by adults with families, for example.

Casual work has been the focus of particular concerns in New Zealand. Until now, the evidence on casual work has been largely qualitative, obtained from interviews carried out with those working in particular occupations and industries. That qualitative research identified a number of potential issues, such as limited training opportunities or pathways into permanent work, shift work patterns that are potentially disruptive to personal and family wellbeing, workers receiving inadequate notice of changes to their shifts or hours, workers having limited knowledge of their legal entitlements (particularly their holiday entitlements), and difficulties in accessing sick or bereavement leave.

The analysis of casual work that is presented in this paper provides some new insights into the prevalence of these issues or problems. It appears that casual workers do undertake less training than similar permanent workers who are employed in broadly similar jobs, although 13 percent of casual workers in the survey had received some employer-funded training in the last year, and the gap in informal on-the-job training is not necessarily as large as the gap in formal training. Through further analysis of the dataset, it may be possible to gain more insights into the characteristics of the casual workers who do and do not receive training.

The survey results confirm that casual workers were more likely than permanent workers to be at work during the evenings and weekends, and show that they largely did their evening and weekend hours as part of an organised and paid shift, which means it is unlikely that those hours were worked at home. Seasonal workers (many of whom are employed on a casual basis) were particularly likely to work at unsocial times of the day or on the weekend. To assess whether these work patterns are likely to be disruptive to personal and family wellbeing, further analysis could be undertaken of the characteristics of the casual and seasonal employees who worked during evenings and weekends, looking at whether they had spouses and children, and their responses to the survey question on whether working at non-standard times caused them difficulties.

The survey results also indicate that a substantial minority of casual workers receive very little notice of the specific hours they are required to work (or of changes to those shifts and hours). Eighteen percent said they usually received one day's notice or less, and 13 percent said that the usual notice period varied. In addition, there is evidence that a large proportion of casual workers had a relatively poor knowledge of their holiday entitlements. The characteristics of casual employees in these situations could also be further examined.

If survey is repeated in future years as planned, it will be possible to use the data from successive surveys to monitor changes in the prevalence of temporary work and the employment patterns of temporary workers.