Tribune column, 25 July 2003
I’ve just been
informed that I'm going to be laid off. No, not by Tribune (you'll all be pleased to know), but by one of my other
employers, The Guardian, for which I
work casual shifts on the comment page.
There won't be any work for me, I was told, in September or
October.
I'm hardly heartbroken: I've plenty of other work, and I
think the Guardian will have me back.
What gets me, however, is the reason I'm being laid off: the legislation passed
by Tony Blair's government that gives workers the right to appeal against
unfair dismissal after a year of continuous employment.
Worried by the prospect that the legislation will be used by
a large number of casuals to claim permanent jobs – we are hired by the day and
have no security of employment – the newspaper's management (like that of
several other papers and magazines) has decided that no casuals should be
allowed to work 12 months in a row. The rule now is that, once a year, every
casual has to take two months off – and my time is up. Although that isn't a
major hassle for me, hundreds of others whose sole source of income is casual
shifts are having to take a substantial annual pay cut or find work with other
newspapers or magazines.
It makes no difference if we protest that we have no
intention of taking up our rights to employment protection or if we insist that
we actually prefer our casual status to permanent employment: we're simply told
that company policy is company policy.
Even signing a legally binding waiver – "I promise that
I won't claim a proper job", or words to that effect – is not an option
these days: that is one of the things that has been ruled out since 1997.
A defender of the legislation would argue that our problem
is down to the attitude of management, and there is a lot of truth in this.
On one hand, they are undoubtedly trying cynically to resist
giving permanent positions to a few people who have been casuals for ages and
are to all effects and purposes doing a permanent job, but without the rights.
On the other, they are working on the assumption that casuals are queuing up
for permanent jobs, which is patently not the case: if they trusted their
workers more, they would find that the catastrophe they fear isn't round the
corner at all.
But this is not the whole story. The union most casuals
belong to is the National Union of Journalists. And, like most unions, it is
historically committed to decasualisation as a policy – and refuses to
recognise that there is a problem with it.Its priority remains to get permanent
jobs for the small number of its casual members who want them, rather than
defend the now much larger number of casuals who prefer to remain that way. The
argument that the union should be backing both groups falls on deaf ears.
Why this is I'm not quite sure, but the attitude at NUJ
headquarters seems to be that casuals who don't want permanent jobs are
suffering from some kind of petty-bourgeois false consciousness. The advantages
of staying casual – that you can pick when you work and when you don't, and
that you don't get saddled with all the dull administration and the culture of
"presenteeism" that are the staffer's lot – simply don't register.
Now, I'm aware that employers using casual labour to evade
their responsibilities are, in the grand scheme of things, a bigger problem
than well-paid casual workers who value autonomy above security having to
adjust their annual routines. There is, however, an important point of
principle here that goes far beyond the little world of newspapers and
magazines.
The "labour-market flexibility" this government
enthuses about is largely a matter of employers being allowed to operate
hire-and-fire policies. But some sorts of labour-market flexibility are good
for workers – and unions should recognise it.
In a time of full employment and labour shortages, such as
our own, many people recognise that the demand for their labour is such that
they can earn a decent living without having to buckle under to the demands of
a proper job. Working freelance or casual is not necessarily second-best to
permanent employment: it can be a positive choice that gives you more control
over your everyday life.
There is a simple solution: the government could legislate
to reinstate the provision allowing casuals and short-term contract employees
to sign a simple form waiving their employment rights. Something tells me that
the unions would recoil in horror at such a move.
But has anyone got a better idea?
