Political Economy Seminar | The structural drivers of precarious work in Australia, 1990–2020
Political Economy Seminar
The structural drivers of precarious work in Australia, 1990–2020
Speaker: Nick Avery, PhD student
Friday April 29th, 10-11.30am
Room: 650, A02 Social Sciences Building
Please join us for the first PE seminar for 2022, delivered by PhD student, Nick Avery.
Abstract: Precarious work is a widely-used umbrella term for multiple kinds of insecure and exploitative work arrangements, including casual work, platform work, and seasonal labour. Precarious work has numerous adverse impacts on workers, is inherently alienating, and its presence is a seemingly entrenched aspect of the Australian labour market. Few studies have considered the structural drivers of precarious work, but mostly these are sector-specific, and all have run the risk of employing unwieldy narratives like neoliberalism, globalisation, and automation without historical specificity.
This thesis seeks to explain changes in work that is low pay, insecure, with inferior entitlements, and where workers have limited control over their labour by a longitudinal and integrated analysis of the Australian labour market, industrial relations, Federal Government policy, and class power during the period 1990 to 2020.