emplloyed - Closing the Casual Work Loophole for Tasmania

emplloyed Closing the Casual Work Loophole for Tasmania ACTU Research Note – January 2024 Closing the casual work loophole for Tasmanians1 Next month the Australia Parliament will consider the remainder of the Closing Loopholes Bill, which will seek to close the casual work loophole introduced into the Fair Work Act by the former Morrison Government nearly three years ago, among other things. [...] How many casual workers in Tasmania want to become permanent? To better understand the extent to which people change between casual and permanent working arrangements, the Australian Bureau of Statistics conducted a new survey module run throughout the 2022-23 financial year.4 Under the Fair Work Act, an employee has to be with an employer for at least 12 months before they can access the provisio. [...] To better understand the scale of this demand, Unions Tasmania and the ACTU applied these rates to the ABS Labour Force survey which provides a more representative measure of total casual employment. [...] This estimate is also likely different from the actual number of casuals who would be eligible to apply to convert to permanent work under the proposed changes in the Closing Loopholes Bill No.2 because eligibility under the Bill’s measure would kick in at 6 months for employees at a business with 15 or more employees6, and the test applied is slightly different.7 Those wanting to convert to perma. [...] In Tasmania, the situation for casual workers is even worse: The median weekly earnings of casuals in Australia is $642, compared to median weekly earnings of $600 for casuals in Tasmania, or a gap of $42.9 Casual workers in Tasmania are also more likely to be women: 58% of casuals in Tasmania are women compared to 53% nationally.