Word: wynhausen
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Dates: during 2005-2005
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...With no sick leave, superannuation or any other benefits of permanent work, casual employees, Wynhausen discovers, live in a state of grinding uncertainty. When taken on at a large retail store, she's told her hours could be anywhere "from nought to 38 a week" - and she might only find out at the start of the week. A three-hour shift might be 10 days away - even if rent day isn't. In this world, unions seem largely absent or ineffectual: when Wynhausen and her co-workers are paid the wrong rates, or expected to work overtime without pay, there...
...moves from one low-paid job to another, Wynhausen finds that for most of her co-workers, the concept of job security, let alone job satisfaction, is pure whimsy. What she experiences is the backwash of one of the labor market's great transforming trends: Australia may be enjoying its lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, but a quarter of workers are now casuals, and two-thirds of all jobs created since 1990 were casual positions...
...Wynhausen is at her wry best recounting the exhausting and mind-numbing work at a rural egg-packing plant, where she contends with fast-moving eggs and machinery as if she were doing battle. In a "grim, rancorous atmosphere," she and her co-workers sort, stack and pack about 47,000 dozen eggs a day, in busy periods working 10 hours a day, six days a week. By the time she has paid for rent, food, petrol and newspapers, she has $A7 left for the week...
...Coming from a profession where opinions are constantly and loudly expressed, Wynhausen at times can't curb her outrage at the way she and her colleagues are treated. Her co-workers urge her to be careful, for fear that she'll lose shifts or even her job. As Wynhausen admits, having a career and a mortgage-free home to return to means she can never experience the low-wage world as its inhabitants do. She befriends a few people - and reveals her project to them when she quits. But most of her co-workers treat her with suspicious reserve; some...
...this doesn't take away from the fact that while she's packing eggs and washing dishes, Wynhausen is performing a far more important job: bringing into focus a part of Australian society that's too often overlooked. Aching, belittled and run off her feet, she can soon barely afford the basics on what she's earning, and in at least one job has to fall back on her savings. "I tried but failed," she writes, "to do what millions of Australians do every day." She begins her book with a dig at high-profile media colleagues...