[extract from researcher Barbara Pocock's address to the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand Feb 2005]
More than one-quarter of Australian employees cannot take a paid holiday or paid sick day and many feel a lack of control over their working time, with big implications for households.
Households rely on women's earnings. A rapid increase in debt means households are sensitive to economic variables such as interest rates. A worker without debt has political sensitivities quite different from one who owes a great deal.
This does not necessarily mean that Australians are more materialistic or individualistic but that their level of personal vulnerability is higher and their unstable vote reflects it.
.... the ballot box swells with the votes of women, service sector, casual, part time and professional workers, who live in every electorate.
These voters are interested in policies that make their jobs better by giving them more control over their working time and its organisation, and providing a fair workplace with decent pay, including for women's jobs.
... policy that makes the modest earnings of ordinary wage earners an excuse for a further round of employer-friendly "flexibility" may well wear thin in a workforce that knows about excessive executive pay, faces high levels of insecurity and experiences many pockets of low pay.
For this workforce, the union bogy and strikes are lost in history, while the daily struggle to work reasonable hours for a fair wage that covers debt and allows a decent household life is front and centre. The remade worker is no longer an assured vote and a standard sort of guy - instead he is diverse and politically unattached, but someone to whom work continues to matter a great deal.
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