While the Coalition, employers and the business media insist that insecure work is a figment of Labor’s imagination, Sydney travellers have been experiencing the pointy end of an increasing reliance on poorly paid casual work and a reluctance of large employers to offer workers pay rises.
Throughout the pandemic, both Qantas and Sydney Airport constantly demanded that border restrictions be lifted and airlines be allowed to fly again. In September 2020, Sydney Airport CEO Geoff Culbert said states closing their borders to protect their citizens “is inconsistent with what it means to be Australian”. In February 2021 Culbert called for an early reopening of borders “once vulnerable members of the community were vaccinated”. And even as the east coast entered an extended lockdown and states shut borders again due to the Delta wave last year, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce repeatedly issued “plans” for travel to resume.
As well as standing down 20,000 staff during the pandemic, Joyce sacked 6000 workers as part of a major cost-cutting exercise over 2020-21. Now people wanting to make inquiries or speak to Qantas, which was privatised by the Keating government, have to endure seven-hour waits on the phone.
The bigger queueing problem is at the airport itself, of course, with massive queues outside the door at domestic terminals due to a lack of airport security staff. The NSW government today admitted that people unlucky enough to have to use Sydney Airport were stuck with nightmarish waiting lines.
Sydney Airport — privatised by the Howard government — doesn’t provide its own security services. They are provided by security company SNP, which in 2018 was bought by Singaporean company Certis. Certis is a corporatised arm of the Singaporean police force, and a major company in security and public order in Singapore. It is owned entirely by the Singapore government’s investment arm, Temasek.
Certis says it is a victim of workforce shortages and COVID restrictions and can’t attract staff, which it is desperately advertising for. Risibly, it was reported today the company is offering a $50 Woolies gift card to attract more workers to understaffed shifts.
This is the standard approach by Australian employers to staff shortages now — not to offer higher wages that might attract more workers, but to offer one-off incentives — though few have offered an incentive so lacklustre as a $50 grocery card.
Insecure and casualised work is a problem for workers when unemployment is higher: workers’ bargaining power is limited or non-existent, and the industrial relations system does little to protect them — though the Transport Workers Union has been effective at using the Fair Work Commission to push back against the core myth of the gig economy, that its workers aren’t employees but independent contractors.
It’s also a problem when unemployment is low, but the labour market no longer responds in the way that markets should to shortages, by raising the price of labour, because employers refuse to countenance ongoing wage increases. For whom is it worth getting out of bed, taking time away from friends and family, sacrificing a weekend or a night’s sleep, for award minimum wages and a $50 bag (you’d only get one bag) of groceries? The market response is to not provide labour.
Queueing is another form of market response. Queueing is what happens in command economies when there are no price signals — producers don’t have an incentive to produce more because prices don’t rise — so people have to queue up for limited supplies of a product. And as a result consumers pay with their time stuck in a line, if they can get that product at all.
People stranded in those absurdly long queues at Sydney Airport can thank business-as-usual public policy over the past 30 years: privatised public entities, with monopoly or near-monopoly market positions, more intent on maximising profit than ensuring customer service for people forced to use them, and transferring the cost of those companies’ refusal to pay higher wages to consumers stuck in a slow-moving airport line.
And economists wonder why voters utterly despise privatisation so much.
And the people who bear the brunt of the consumers’ displeasure are those few left working on the front line. Which makes working on the front line unbearable. So people quit, jobs can’t be filled, and companies complain that locals are lazy and don’t want to work, and therefore immigration is needed so that they can have slaves. I really hope the day is coming when the people at the top and the people sitting on the boards feel the pain as much as the overworked employee being abused on the frontline.
Yes but that day will never come. Maybe now as some are working to fill in check-in roles but as soon as they can, they will be back to their top floor ivory towers and offices all to themselves forgetting about it all over cocktails at 5.
Easy peasy, buy some shares and turn up for the AGM.
Get enough and lead a first strike on their pay.
Really? Ask Stephen Mayne about that tactic!
Brilliant article Bernard. Staffing is the rock upon which many a large and small enterprise has faltered. Home Affairs among other agencies has used thousands of casuals at its airports. They are at APS2 classification when the base grade for Home Affairs airport staff is an APS3 as it has been at their equivalent rate and classification for ever. Home Affairs/ABF and its predecessors, referred to as Customs, have been trying to get rid of them for decades. They cost too much apparently as they are shift workers and the restructure of Customs into the mainstream public service meant that they had to be classified at APS3 level. There are not many APS2s or 1s in the public service period. Hundreds of casualised APS2s or IIEs as they are known as have left the service. The system has burnt them. Used and abused. They have left for better – jobs or study. The program cost the department many millions which they won’t divulge. To provide a bedrock of staff some have been made full time casual on an annual basis. THey can only do this for 4 years before they are compelled to make them permanent. To be an APS3 one must go through the gruelling Border Force Trainee Program of 1 year with no guarantees of placement to a location of preference.
It is not just Home Affairs as you have said but airline check-in staff and SNP Security screening staff. If there are more demand for travel at the Domestic terminal, staff from the airlines and security will transfer there, leaving the International terminal to fend for itself. It is going to take time to ramp up and for its domestic leg at least, QANTAS doesn’t have check-in staff – only dumb kiosks/poles to dispense bagga ena dseat tickets. This is what Alan Joyce said when he complained that due to the long dely for air travel, passengers are lacking “match fitness”. Meaning they don;t know hwo to self report or self process.
Y es this si capitalism and fascism. Work your staff to death.
Thanks for the public service detail Metal Guru.
The Sydney airport train is another rip-off.
It must be the only rail journey on the planet which costs 5 times as much to travel to the 3rd & 4th stations than the other dozen or so many kilometres further on up the line.
With gold Opals paying full fare. $28 there & back?
Aussie innovation!
Can do capitalism!
Actually you will find similar models in other countries as regards airport train costs. Seems they all love the captive audience.
The Qantas brand is as toxic as Amazon now.
And Telstra
Just ask an ex Ansett employee. Competition for one and too big too fail (subsidies) for the other.
Made in Kirribilli for the ‘rust-belt States. (just like the clothing/textile and automotive industries)
Glad to hear I am not the only one who feels sick in the stomach when the latest Qantas TV commercial airs. In the past two years, I have lost my FF points, as I haven’t been able to fly. Now I find my credit with the company is all but worthless. This is particularly galling as all our American connections, we got a full refund with assistance from our travel agent. Qantas is no longer my airline of choice.
On the old QF2 out of London there was always a cheer when the Capt came on,, after wheel-up to announce we were en route to Sydney.
A similar roar on touchdown at SKSA – although if there were many poms on board the whining went on, even after the engines shut down.
ha ha an oldie but a goodie. Flying back to Oz always makes me feel sentimental (softie that I am) so a solid Aussie accent definitely lifted the spirit. Bit pathetic really I know, specially as they were pretty well always male in the day! Good to hear more female voices now.
Great writing BK. Thanks. It’s a breath of fresh air to be able to read a considered article of substance instead of the gotcha pap being served up in much of the rest of the msm.
And thanks to Crikey for keeping comments open.