Amazon Web Services



Victorian Youth Summit 2019

Keynote Speech: Natalie James, Chair of the Victorian Inquiry into the On-demand Workforce

5 April 2019

Opening remarks

Thank you for the chance to talk to you today.

Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are meeting. I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present, and the Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be here today.

Who am I and why should you listen to me?

I head the Inquiry into the on-demand workforce in Victoria (more about this later).

I am also a Partner at Deloitte. I specialise in advising businesses about workplace laws.

I was Australia’s Fair Work Ombudsman for five years.

The Ombudsman’s role is to promote harmonious and productive workplaces, and to make sure everyone understands Australia’s work laws and complies with them.

Youth as vulnerable workers

The Fair Work Ombudsman focusses on those cohorts who most need help understanding the complex laws.

Its priority is ‘vulnerable workers’ and it classifies young workers as ‘vulnerable’.

This may seem a bit patronising.

As I stand before this engaged and I suspect well-informed audience, I feel a bit uncomfortable pronouncing that you must all be ‘vulnerable’ for the solitary reason of your age.

Let me explain why this was the case.

Workers under the age of 25 make up 15% of the workforce but have consistently been represented in at least 25% of the disputes the Fair Work Ombudsman[1].

So, what is behind that data?

Well, we know that it can be hard to find the sort of work that you need to support you and fits in with your life, especially when you are still building up your skills and qualifications.

Young workers often start out in less skilled and lower paid jobs.

According to the ABS, the unemployment rate for people aged 15-24 in February this year was above 11%[2].

This is much higher than the unemployment rate for the general population.

And once you get a job, you are still learning about the laws:

What am I entitled to get paid?

Do I get penalty rates?

What sort of notice am I entitled to for my shifts?

What happens if I can’t work a shift?

Do I get sick leave?

I know in my first job, in the fast food sector, I didn’t know the answer to these questions and nor did I know where to get answers.

And I was an educated, middle-class kid with no language or cultural barriers, and I had supportive parents.

When I went onto university, it was a matter of frustration to me that even as a law student I struggled to work out how to get help with the rules.

And then there’s the challenge of getting the right amount of work to support you.

More than half of young people worked in casual employment in 2017[3], which should involve higher rates of pay via a casual loading, but may mean unreliable income, less job security and generally no paid leave.

This is reinforced by a survey by the Foundation for Young Australians in 2018 which found 18% of young people were only achieving full-time hours by juggling more than one job[4].

For some people, working more than one job may appeal – give you variety and choices about when and where you work. But it’s a lot to juggle.

The Foundation for Young Australians also looked at how young people are making the transition from study into full-time work. On average, it takes a young person about 2.6 years to get their first full-time job.

I am wondering if this is resonating with you? What’s your experience?

Poll of the audience: Do you have a job?

|Yes, a part-time job |24% |

|Yes, a full-time job |15% |

|Yes, casual work |22% |

|I am self-employed |7% |

|I don’t have a job and that’s ok |8% |

|I don’t have a job, but I wish I had one |37% |

(Based on Sli.do poll of the audience with 162 respondents. Respondents able to select multiple answers.)

The Foundation for Young Australians in their research has suggested a few ways to support people starting out in their career to get into full time work sooner.

Building up useful work-related skills, like problem-solving, communication and teamwork, is the seen as critical.

People who do this find full-time work 17 times faster.

Finding relevant paid work experience helps too, getting people into full-time work 12 times faster[5].

Some of you are skipping the step of finding someone else to give you a job, by creating your own.

ABS Census 2016 data shows that in Australia about 2.3% of the people running small businesses are under 25.

That’s about 35,000 people.

A recent study of young people in the US by EY and EIG showed that 62 per cent of them had considered starting their own business.

However, only 22 per cent of them thought it was the best way to get ahead in their career[6].

Some of you doing ‘gig’ work may be classified as running your own business – with an ABN and requirements to lodge tax and work out insurance and superannuation for yourselves.

That can be complicated too.

Irrespective of whether you are employed by someone else or running your own show, there’s a set of rules you need to be able to navigate and comply with.

How the system works

So, returning to the scenario where you work for someone else, how do you ensure you are aware of your entitlements?

The Fair Work Act includes national minimum standards and Awards set out pay rates and other conditions.

The Awards cover different industries.

For example, if you’re a waiter in a café, you are covered by the Restaurant Industry Award.

It covers things like penalty rates, rosters, meal breaks and how long someone can work without a break.

But it’s a complex document running to 60-plus pages.

The Pay Guide for this award sets out 45 pages of tables containing different rates payable for different shifts and types of workers.

What do you do if you think things aren’t right, or you aren’t getting what you should be?

Poll of the audience: If you have a dispute or concern about work, what is the best way to resolve it?

|Talk to my boss |53% |

|Contact a government agency, eg, FWO |7% |

|Talk to my co-workers |12% |

|Ask a parent or friend for advice |22% |

|Post something on social media |2% |

|Put up with it or find a new job |4% |

(Based on Sli.do poll of the audience with 162 respondents.)

This is where the Ombudsman comes in.

Its services are free. It has a wealth of information on its website specifically aimed at young workers and if you have a concern, it can assist you to resolve it.

Unions can also assist their members understand the rules and enforce them.

So, educate yourselves and make informed choices about work.

The ‘gig economy’

We’re here today to talk about the future of work. And already we can see that work is constantly evolving.

Research by the Foundation for Young Australians has revealed that career path of 15-year-old today will probably have a lot more twists and turns than the traditional path the older generations followed.

They might have about 17 different jobs over five careers in their lifetime.

They might be self-employed, working for other people or doing both.

They’ll probably collaborate with people on the other side of the world.

They’ll be more likely to juggle more than one job at once[7].

Technology is playing a big part in these changing ways of working.

A Paris study found that, in France, the internet has created 1.2 million new jobs.

And in the United States, one-third of jobs created in the past 25 years were new professions like IT development [8].

Automation, globalisation and flexibility are changing the way we work. We’re seeing this happen already.

And of course, we all love to engage with and have an opinion about the “gig economy”.

We know it when we see it but what does it actually refer to?

“Gig” refers to a specific gig or work task.

Put simply, it is work that is made possible by using a digital platform.

Technology matches people that need work done with people who want to do that work.

It has become a big part of how we live.

We take it for granted that we can use an app or jump online to have food delivered, get a ride somewhere, or pay a neighbour to mow our lawns.

And while we know it when we see it, we don’t yet have a lot of data about the gig economy.

We hear a lot of stories about these new platforms and businesses: good, bad and sometimes ugly.

Some people say that the on-demand economy gives workers freedom and choice to decide how and when to work.

Others say that this is an exciting time of change that improves services for people and helps businesses to reach more customers.

And there are some people who are worried about whether people in the gig economy are being paid enough, whether the work is safe, or whether their employment rights are protected.

You might have heard about Josh Kluger, the food delivery driver who took Foodora to the Fair Work Commission last year because he thought he had been unfairly fired.

During his time delivering meals via Foodora, he was not paid minimum wages because he was classified as a contractor, not an employee.

The Commission agreed with Josh that he had been unfairly dismissed and it ordered Foodora to pay Josh $16,000.

On the flip side, you might have seen the story in the media last week[9] about Tara Somerville. 22-year-old Tara has used Airtasker to build up a regular following of clients doing a range of tasks like professional organising, administration and zero-waste consultations.

Now she says she is earning more working with her Airtasker clients than she was as a full-time hospitality worker.

Many of you might think Tara is onto something.

What do you think? What is important to you in your work?

Poll of the audience: What do you look for in a job?

|Good pay |40% |

|Flexibility |21% |

|Convenient location |14% |

|A clear career path |19% |

|Opportunity to learn/increase skills |48% |

|Personal happiness and wellbeing |58% |

(Based on Sli.do poll of the audience with 162 respondents. Respondents able to select multiple answers.)

The Inquiry

The Victorian Government has noticed all these changes in technology, and the labour market.

It has set up an Inquiry into the On-demand Workforce.

I’m leading this Inquiry, and we want to hear about what works – and what doesn’t work.

We have received many submissions from a wide range of people and organisations, including workers, unions, businesses and academics.

We are assessing the submissions and we will be talking to people in the industry to learn more.

The Inquiry is very much in a fact-finding and investigation stage.

A strong theme of the submissions has been the value of flexibility and the capacity for on-demand work to meet the diverse range of personal needs and lifestyles.

It has been noted that there are low barriers to entry for some parts of this sector, and it can be an option for young people struggling to find paid work through traditional employment arrangements.

But submissions have also highlighted the effects on individual workers – such as insecure work, or the lack of superannuation and leave.

They have also touched on a lack of transparency in the way some platforms work – how they set their rates and allocate work.

We will be publishing the submissions online soon.

This is a great start, but I am also keen to talk to young people directly on this topic.

So, I’m working with the Office of Youth, who organised this great Summit today, to talk to young workers.

Your opinions about the on-demand workforce are important.

If you want to find out more about the Inquiry, please visit: engage..au/inquiry-on-demand-workforce.

Later this year, we will use all the information that we gather to provide the Victorian Government with a report about what we found and what, if any, changes it could make to improve things in this space.

The future of work is exciting, and full of possibilities.

But it also needs to be fair. For everyone.

-----------------------

[1] Fair Work Ombudsman (May 2018), Address to the Annual National Policy-Influence-Reform Conference, located at .

[2] Australian Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force Commentary, February 2019

[3] Australian Bureau of Statistics, Characteristics of Employment, Chart 5: Number and Proportion of Casual Workers by sex and age, August 2017

[4] Foundation for Young Australians, The New Work Reality, located at

[5] Foundation for Young Australians, The New Work Reality

[6] The Millennial Economy: Findings from a New EY & EIG National Survey of Millennials (2016) located at

[7] The Foundation for Young Australians, Thriving in the New Work Order, located at

[8] James Manyika, Technology Jobs and the Future of Work, 2017, located at

[9] Sydney Morning Herald, Sharing economy booms as Australians yearn for extra cash, 27 March 2019, located at

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download