652074

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ELR0010.1177/1035304616652074The Economic and Labour Relations ReviewCampbell and Price

Article
ELRR
The Economic and

Precarious work and

Labour Relations Review
2016, Vol. 27(3) 314­–332
© The Author(s) 2016
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Towards an improved DOI: 10.1177/1035304616652074
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conceptualisation

Iain Campbell
RMIT University, Australia

Robin Price
Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Abstract
Discussion of the implications of precarious work for individual workers remains
hesitant and often confused. A clear conceptualisation would separate out five analytical
levels: precariousness in employment, precarious work, precarious workers individually
and as an emerging class, and precarity as a general condition of social life. To illustrate
the need to avoid slippage between the concepts of precarious work and precarious
workers, we present one ‘theory-relevant’ example – full-time secondary school
students in Australia who hold part-time jobs in the retail sector. Their part-time jobs
are indeed precarious but the negative effects on the student-workers are modest,
both because participation in precarious work is limited (moderate weekly hours and
intermittent work within the framework of a brief stage of the life course) and because
many (though not all) of the associated risks are cushioned by structural forces such
as access to alternative income sources and career paths. At the same time, however,
a longitudinal perspective reveals that the same group of student-workers faces major
risks in the future, as a result of increasingly insecure labour markets. Reflections on this
example help to identify conceptual tools that can be applied to a wide range of other
examples of precarious work.

JEL Codes: J490

Corresponding author:
Iain Campbell, Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC 3001,
Australia.
Email: iain.campbell@rmit.edu.au
Campbell and Price 315

Keywords
Employment conditions, job quality, labour market insecurity, life course, precarious
work, retail, vulnerable workers, young workers

Introduction
Precariousness and precarious work, broadly identified with high levels of labour inse-
curity, are prominent themes in recent employment relations research (Standing, 2011;
Vosko, 2010; Vosko et al., 2009). Researchers have produced a rich and expanding lit-
erature that describes dimensions of precariousness and forms of precarious work, and
its incidence and trends in advanced capitalist societies (Kalleberg, 2011; McKay et al.,
2012). Although most studies are descriptive, some explore causes, highlighting how
employers, within a framework of porous labour regulation, introduce labour-use prac-
tices that cut costs and shift risk onto individual employees (Frade and Darmon, 2005;
Rafferty and Yu, 2010). The concept of precariousness has been extensively debated
and refined (Arnold and Bongiovi, 2013; Kalleberg and Hewison, 2013). Yet areas of
uncertainty remain.
As currently used by researchers, precariousness spans at least five different levels of
social life. At the most basic level, precariousness in employment is a multi-dimensional
concept referring to objective job characteristics that involve insecurity, such as a low
level of regulatory protection, low wages, high employment insecurity and a low level of
employee control over wages, hours and working conditions (Vosko, 2010: 2; Vosko
et al., 2009: 7). In this sense, precariousness overlaps with a cognate concept of poor ‘job
quality’ (Burchell et al., 2014).
At a second level, precarious work is understood as waged work exhibiting several
dimensions of precariousness (Standing, 2011). Such jobs are often, though not always,
non-standard jobs (Vosko et al., 2009: 7–9). At this level, multiple dimensions of precari-
ousness seem to cluster in particular jobs so that a relative increase in precarious work or
‘bad’ jobs is seen as contributing to employment polarisation in advanced capitalist soci-
eties (Hurley et al., 2013; Kalleberg, 2011).
A third level concerns precarious workers, generally understood as persons not just
engaged in precarious work but also enduring the necessary consequences of precarious-
ness (Anderson, 2010: 303–304). The notion of a precarious generation is advanced by
scholars who focus on youth (Kretsos, 2010). At this level, precariousness in employ-
ment is seen as having a strong and pervasive impact, dispersing insecurity through the
lives of the workers.
A fourth level is that of the precariat. Standing’s initial definition of this group in
labour market terms, as workers who lack seven forms of labour security, is extended in
his recent work into arguments concerning shared social and political attributes. The
precariat – analogous to the 19th-century notion of a proletariat – is identified as a class-
in-the-making that is emerging from the ranks of precarious workers (Standing, 2011).
Finally, a fifth level is that of precarity. This term, used initially by European social
movements and then by academics, refers to a generalised set of social conditions and an
associated sense of insecurity, experienced by precarious workers but extending to other
316 The Economic and Labour Relations Review 27(3)

domains of social life such as housing, welfare provision and personal relationships
(Anderson, 2010; Arnold and Bongiovi, 2013). In human geography and in studies of
migrant labour, precarity is understood in terms of ‘life-worlds that are inflected with
uncertainty and instability’ (Waite, 2009: 416). The recent notion of ‘hyper-precarity’
signals the effects of the extreme forms of labour exploitation experienced by migrant
workers (Lewis et al., 2015).
These five levels are not always clearly distinguished. The first two are connected in
straightforward ways and, though still subject to debate, have proven their value in guid-
ing empirical research on employment trends (Kalleberg and Hewison, 2013). But con-
nections at the other levels are more blurred. Much current debate focuses on the fourth
level and the provocative thesis of an emerging precariat (Breman, 2013). This article,
however, takes up the equally problematic connection between the second and the third
level – between precarious work and precarious workers.
The underlying issue explored here concerns the implications of precarious work for
individual workers – their physical, mental and social well-being and also, more broadly,
their agency and the way in which they integrate paid work into other domains of social
life. To what extent is the precariousness of work transmitted to the worker? This diffi-
cult but important area requires careful conceptualisation in order to extend research on
precarious work and develop policies to combat its effects.
Such careful conceptualisation is needed, given the diversity of individual work
experiences and their varied connections to other domains of life. In contemporary
Australia, precarious (or ‘insecure’) workers could include a recent graduate doing an
unpaid ‘internship’ at an accounting firm, a single mother trying to achieve an ade-
quate income with part-time contract cleaning jobs, a recent migrant working long
weekly hours as a kitchenhand, a blue-collar process worker deployed by a labour-
hire company and a young academic trying to establish a career through sessional
teaching (Howe et al., 2012; Pocock and Skinner, 2012). If we extend our perspective
to other societies, both advanced capitalist societies and developing nations, the range
of individual experiences of precarious work widens even further (McKay et al.,
2012; Vosko et al., 2009). In each case, workers are engaged in precarious work, but
the experience and the potential impact are likely to differ in complex but socially
patterned ways.
This article seeks to improve conceptualisation in this important area. The second
section reviews existing efforts to theorise the connection between precarious work and
workers. It promotes the value of a critical realist perspective in identifying the struc-
tural forces that produce contingent effects on workers (Archer, 1995). The third section
introduces an illustrative example – full-time secondary school students who hold part-
time jobs in the Australian retail sector. The fourth section argues that such part-time
work is appropriately called precarious work, characterised by a distinct configuration
of elements of precariousness. The fifth section explores the social forces shaping the
impact of precarious work on student-workers, and the final section offers some brief
conclusions.
The article contributes to current debates in two areas. First, it outlines conceptual
tools that help to capture the complex and contingent relation between precarious work
and workers. Second, it throws new light on student-workers and precarious work.
Campbell and Price 317

From precarious work to precarious workers?

To make progress in conceptualising the complex and contingent relation between pre-
carious work and workers, it is necessary to be able to analyse both: (a) precise forms of
precarious work and (b) differences among individual workers. The former presents few
difficulties for an analysis that understands precariousness in employment as multi-
dimensional. The latter, however, is subject to fundamental theoretical disputes, such as
the best way to conceptualise social action, human agency, choice and subjectivity
(Stones, 2009).
The research literature on precarious work – and much of the cognate literature on
‘bad’ jobs – reveals the difficulties impeding the second phase of analysis. Some scholars
move freely from precarious work to precarious workers (or merge the two as ‘precari-
ous labour’), but most, conscious of causal complexities and the challenge of accommo-
dating wide variation in individual experiences of precarious work, proceed more
tentatively or sidestep conceptual difficulties.
One common temptation is to acknowledge the diversity of individual experiences
but to identify this diversity with differences in personal attributes, usually classified as
‘subjective’. This approach presumes that perceptions, attitudes, work orientations and
subjective identities can be regarded as the prime movers behind human agency. By
contrast, we argue that while social action contains a subjective dimension, it is funda-
mentally shaped by the institutions and social relations within which individual agency
is embedded (Archer, 1995). In order to explain forms of social action, it is necessary to
uncover the social context constraining or enabling social action (Edwards, 2005).
Social context is invoked in some research literature on precarious workers, but rarely
in a systematic way. Using alternative terms such as ‘vulnerable workers’, some scholars
(Burgess et al., 2013; Sargeant and Tucker, 2009) succeed in opening up space for more
contingency in the relation between work and the worker. But much depends on how
‘vulnerability’ is understood. Current literature on vulnerability acknowledges that struc-
tural forces such as management control, industry conditions and relations of competi-
tion are important within the workplace, but once the discussion moves outside the
workplace, it tends to be narrowly channelled into a list of personal attributes that weaken
the ability of the individual worker to resist workplace risks (Burgess et al., 2013: 4084–
4085; Kalleberg, 2011: 78–80, 87).
In grappling with social context, other scholars offer a useful notion of ‘social loca-
tion’, defined as ‘the interaction between social relations, such as gender, and legal and
political categories, such as citizenship’ (Vosko, 2010: 2). This perspective is developed
most fully in Clement et al. (2009), who argue that the relationship between precarious
work and a broader notion of precarious lives is contingent (p. 244). The social condi-
tions in which workers’ lives are embedded, such as household structures, kinship net-
works and access to welfare services independent of labour market status, may modify
the effects of precarious work, for example, when welfare states provide financial and
other support ‘buffering’ the impact of poor labour market conditions (Clement et al.,
2009: 241–244).
Interview-based case studies may provide contextual insights. For example, a case
study of room attendants in upmarket hotels in London, Glasgow and Sydney (Knox et al.,
318 The Economic and Labour Relations Review 27(3)

2015) starts with the observation that housekeeping jobs in hotels are widely and accu-
rately regarded as poor quality jobs, defined by hard work, low skill, little progression and
low pay. It notes, however, that individual workers may have ‘different, even positive,
subjective experiences and perceptions of the same objectively “bad job”’ (Knox et al.,
2015: 1548). The analysis identifies a wide range of salient factors, such as qualifications,
alternative employment options, stage of the life course, family responsibilities and immi-
grant or local status, and then, importantly, shows how these factors can mediate between
the characteristics of the job and the experiences of the worker.
Nevertheless, even the most advanced case studies often reveal the tug of subjective
understandings of diverse experiences of precarious work (see also Cooke et al., 2013;
Johnson, 2015). Thus, the case study of room attendants wrongly labels individual expe-
riences, as well as perceptions, as ‘subjective’ (Knox et al., 2015: 1548), failing to note
that the former have an objective dimension that requires careful attention. Experiences
of low pay, for example, entail struggles for livelihood that are resistant to personal pref-
erences and characteristics. Different experiences of low pay are linked to social struc-
tures, both inside and outside the workplace; experiences may be softened by the
availability of alternative income sources or hardened by the demands of high fixed costs
(e.g. debt repayments, ongoing personal costs such as medicine and ongoing household
costs such as childcare) (Masterman-Smith and Pocock, 2008).
Much discussion of the impact of precarious work betrays a flat ontology that jumbles
together social institutions, social action, ascriptive characteristics, experiences and atti-
tudes. A better starting point is the layered analysis associated with critical realism, mov-
ing beyond the surface level of perception (‘the empirical’), to explore events and actions
at the level of ‘the actual’, in turn influenced by social structures at a further level of ‘the
real’ (Archer, 1995; Fleetwood, 2011: 22; Sayer, 2000: 11–12). Social structures are seen
as having causal powers which are ‘emergent’ and contextual, being activated only under
certain conditions and having varied consequences dependent on their intersection with
other social structures (Sayer, 2000: 12–17).
Applied to the impact of precarious work, this perspective sees the employment rela-
tion as a central social structure in capitalist societies (Edwards, 2005). It possesses
causal powers that can be expected to shape the experiences of individual workers inside
and outside the workplace, but the precise impact is likely to depend on specific charac-
teristics of the employment relation, including the presence or absence of dimensions of
precariousness (Thompson and Vincent, 2010). The impact will also depend on elements
of the broader social context, for example, conditions that activate the risks of precari-
ousness, such as the dependence of full-time workers on the wage for their livelihood,
and other social structures such as family relations, social norms, education, financial
institutions and welfare regimes (Fleetwood, 2011; Rubery, 2005).
Institutions and social relations outside the workplace can act to mediate the relation
between work and the worker. Such mediation does not eliminate or qualify the character
of work as precarious, but it can modify the potential impact of precarious work on the
worker by either amplifying or cushioning risks. Amplifying occurs, for example, when
immigration rules give workers a precarious migrant status (Anderson, 2010; Sargeant
and Tucker, 2009) or when unfamiliarity with local workplace customs heightens the risk
of illness and injury at work (e.g. Lewchuk et al., 2008; Underhill and Quinlan, 2011).
Campbell and Price 319

But cushioning is also evident, for example, when welfare state payments reduce the risk
of low pay leading to poverty (Clement et al., 2009: 244; Kalleberg, 2011: 87).

An example: Secondary school students working part-time

To underline the importance of contextual conditions and to illustrate the way in which
they can operate as mediating factors, this article, drawing on previous empirical
research (Campbell and Chalmers, 2008; McDonald et al., 2010, 2011; Price, 2015;
Price et al., 2011, 2014), takes up one example of the impact of precarious work: the
experiences of full-time secondary school students in Australia with part-time jobs in
the retail sector. Although school-aged workers are employed in what are readily
described as precarious jobs, they do not fit smoothly into the conventional understand-
ing of precarious workers. As such, they represent a good platform for improving con-
ceptualisation on the impact of precarious work. This example conforms to
methodological advice about the value of developing theory through reflection on ‘the-
ory-relevant’ or ‘theory-useful’ cases (Burawoy, 2009; Eisenhardt, 2002).
Combining full-time study and a part-time job – generally a casual part-time job
after school, on weekends or during school holidays – is a common experience for
Australian secondary school students. In June 2015, 30% of secondary students aged
15–19 were counted as employed, an increase from 24.2% in April 1986, but down from
the peak recorded before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008–2009 (Australian
Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2015a). The likelihood of having a job was higher for girls
than for boys and slightly higher for students from middle-class rather than working-
class households (Anlezark and Lim, 2011: 14–15, 18–21; House of Representatives,
2009: 10–11).
The proportion of Australian secondary school students that is employed is higher
than in many other industrialised countries (House of Representatives, 2009: 10), and
most students will have had some experience of part-time work by the time they finish
school. The evidence suggests that working hours of employed school students are
moderate, averaging 10 or fewer per week (House of Representatives 2009: 16–17;
Patton and Smith, 2009: 218) – well within the conventional definition of ‘minimal’
part-time hours.
Many school students work in the retail sector, especially in food retailing and super-
markets, on the cash register or stacking shelves. As an industry division, retail offers
numerous part-time jobs, thereby making it a good match for people seeking paid work
that can be combined with other activities. The significance of part-time employment in
retail has strengthened in recent decades in Australia (ABS, 2014), as in many advanced
capitalist societies, where it can be linked to employer labour-use practices, developed in
the context of the liberalisation of trading hours, the increased dominance of large firms,
cost pressures and new deskilling technologies (Carré et al., 2010). Retail employers
increasingly break up work into fragmented schedules that can be configured (and con-
tinuously adjusted) to meet changing demand and the need for labour cost discipline
(Jany-Catrice and Lehndorff, 2005). Adjusting fragmented schedules, often at short
notice, shifts risk to employees, at the expense of instability in their hours and income
(Lambert, 2008).
320 The Economic and Labour Relations Review 27(3)

The part-time retail workforce in Australia is skewed towards young workers – not
only secondary school students but also tertiary students and young school leavers. Each
group presents employers with distinct scheduling advantages and disadvantages. School
students are available for small fractional amounts of work (Smith, 2004; Smith and
Patton, 2011), but they tend to be free to work only at certain limited times of the day and
week, making them more attractive as ‘gap fillers’ than as ‘time adjusters’ (Jany-Catrice
and Lehndorff, 2005: 224–228).
Two points about pay-setting institutions are crucial in shaping employer strategies in
low-wage sectors such as retail (Carré et al., 2010). First is the provision in Australia for
discriminatory age-related wages, whereby employers are permitted to give reduced pay
(‘junior rates’) to young workers (Carnie, 2012; Stewart and Van der Waarden, 2011). In
the retail award, wage rates for juniors begin at 45% of the adult rate for those under 16
years and increase each year of age until the full adult rate applies at 21, recently reduced
to 20 years of age (General Retail Industry Award, 2010), and currently subject to a union
campaign for adult rates at 18 (Malinauskas, 2013). This gradual increase in rates also
applies in the collective agreements of the major retail companies. Nearly all school
students are employed under junior rates, which were estimated to cover around 10% of
total retail employees in 2006 (Pech et al., 2009: 30).
The second feature is the provision for casual employment, generally understood as
hour-by-hour or shift-by-shift employment that lacks the standard rights and entitlements
associated with continuing and fixed-term employment (Campbell, 2004). Except for a
right to a minimum daily engagement period, generally of 3 hours (Carnie, 2012), casual
employees have little working-time security and can be employed on irregular and vary-
ing rosters, with little notice of changes. Most casual employees lack any effective pro-
tection against termination, or rights to a period of notice, since dismissal can be
interpreted as just a failure to rehire (Creighton and Stewart, 2010: 198–204). Similarly,
they lack access to the benefits that accrue to continuing workers, such as paid annual
leave, paid public holidays and paid sick leave. According to labour regulation, casual
workers are entitled to a pay loading, generally 25%, in lieu of benefits, but casual work-
ers suffer an ‘earnings penalty’ in comparison with equivalent continuing workers
(Watson, 2005: 378–382). In retail, casual workers constituted 40.1% of all employees in
November 2013 (ABS, 2014). Most part-time jobs held by school students are casual:
McDonald et al. (2010: 15) suggest the proportion is over 90%.

Is this precarious work?

The part-time jobs of school students in retail, reflecting dominant employer labour-use
practices (Price et al., 2011), are relatively homogeneous. Despite differences in tasks,
schedules, size of enterprise and workplace cultures, most are characterised by short
hours, low hourly pay rates and casual status. In assessing whether this is precarious
work and identifying its main characteristics, we use a (slightly modified) schema from
Vosko (2010: 2; see Rodgers, 1989: 3), which identifies four dimensions of precarious-
ness in employment: (1) a lack of regulatory protection, (2) low wages, (3) high employ-
ment insecurity and (4) low levels of employee control over wages, hours and working
conditions.
Campbell and Price 321

Lack of regulatory protection

At first glance, student-workers appear to enjoy an adequate level of regulatory protec-
tion since they are covered, as are all employees, by statutory legislation (occupational
health and safety, workers’ compensation and the Australian National Employment
Standards) and award regulation, underpinned by the provisions of the common law
and supplemented for some employees by collective bargaining agreements (Bray and
Stewart, 2013; Creighton and Stewart, 2010). In addition, school students are subject
through state and territory legislation to special protections, such as minimum age
limits for performance of particular kinds of work (Stewart and Van der Waarden,
2011), and this is backed up, at least in larger enterprises, by codes of conduct that aim
to regulate employer and supervisor behaviour (Smith and Patton, 2009). All workers
are entitled to join a union, suggesting an added layer of protection (Creighton and
Stewart, 2010).
Protective regulation builds an important floor of minimum standards for many school
students, but its effectiveness is undermined by employer non-compliance, prevalent in
small retail enterprises (Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), 2011). Moreover, casual
employment status deprives employees of some standard employment protections pre-
scribed in statutes and awards. Furthermore, it is unclear whether union membership
adds much to employment protection for casual workers. Union density in retail overall
is 13.9%, although density in food retailing – facilitated by collaboration between the
major union, the Shop and Distributive Employees Association (SDA), and the major
supermarket chains – is somewhat higher (25.7%) (ABS, 2013). Union membership
encompasses casual workers, including some school students, but membership turnover
is high, consistent with high job turnover, and does not necessarily lead to effective rep-
resentation for such workers (Price et al., 2014).

Low wages
Low wages are characteristic of the retail sector (Australian Workforce and Productivity
Agency (AWPA), 2014: 45; Pech et al., 2009: 21, 26–31), but the problem is especially
acute for young workers because of the application of junior rates. Where employer non-
compliance is widespread, hourly rates may fall below even the low rates specified in
awards and agreements. For many part-time employees, low hourly rates are com-
pounded by short working hours and variable schedules, producing very low and fluctu-
ating weekly pay.

Employment insecurity
Short job tenure and high turnover are prominent features of retail jobs (AWPA, 2014:
40; Pech et al., 2009: 21–22). Although some school students stay in one part-time job
for several years, for others, employment is unstable and short-term. Uncertainty about
employment continuity is particularly salient for casual jobs, and unfair dismissal is a
common complaint of secondary school students, often linked to a reduction in shifts as
students grow older and are more expensive to employ (NSW Teachers Federation, 2007:
12–13).
322 The Economic and Labour Relations Review 27(3)

Training is one pathway to greater security, both within a job and within an occupa-
tional career. But retail is predominantly composed of occupations that employers see as
requiring little training (AWPA, 2014). Access to formal training tends to be low for all
retail employees, with part-time and casual employees particularly disadvantaged
(Productivity Commission, 2011: 395). Retail employers claim young workers gain use-
ful ‘employability skills’ through informal job learning (Smith and Patton, 2011).

Low levels of employee control

Limited employee control over wages, hours and working conditions is a feature of
part-time retail jobs, often associated with employer demands for ‘flexible scheduling’
(Campbell and Chalmers, 2008; Price, 2015). The majority of employed school children
in a Queensland survey reported hours that varied from week to week (McDonald et al.,
2010: 20–21). Most changes were initiated by the employer and included shifts can-
celled after arrival at work, pressure to work through breaks, unreasonable short notice
requests to work shifts and cutting of hours of students who had previously refused a
shift (McDonald et al., 2010: 18–24).

Summary
In sum, part-time retail jobs held by school students can be accurately described as pre-
carious work. Labour regulation establishes some minimum standards, but it leaves
ample room for precariousness, mainly in the form of very low wages and high employ-
ment insecurity.

Precarious workers? What is the impact of this precarious

work?
Much existing discussion of the impact of precarious work on student-workers identifies
them as ‘vulnerable workers’, at risk through personal attributes such as limited employ-
ment relations knowledge, reluctance to report complaints, lack of confidence and vul-
nerability to bullying (FWO, 2010; House of Representatives, 2009: 76). Especially in
an employment context involving low regulatory protection, where workers have to rely
on individual bargaining power, these attributes are salient and can lead to higher risks of
injury and ill-health at the workplace (Mayhew, 2005). Although retail has a lower rate
of injuries than many industries (Australian Safety and Compensation Council, 2007),
young workers in retail are likely to be exposed to higher risks than other retail workers.
If these risks are realised, the consequences for individuals can be major and long-term
(Underhill and Quinlan, 2011).
Reference to youth vulnerability is apt but partial. It singles out factors that act to
amplify precariousness but misses important contextual forces that also mediate the
impact of precariousness. Attention to social context suggests that most full-time second-
ary school students in Australia share a similar social location, characterised first by
full-time engagement in education and second by membership of a family household as
a dependent child who is reliant on significant parental support (financial, emotional and
Campbell and Price 323

practical). This anchors a distinctive type of participation in paid work which is subsidi-
ary to school and family life, confined to a small number of aggregate hours per week
and often only short-term and intermittent.
Consideration of social context helps to identify three salient conditions: (1) limited
participation in employment, (2) access to an independent income source and (3) access
to alternative career paths. These conditions do not eliminate precariousness for student-
workers, but they tend to modify its impact by cushioning risks. In addition, a further
element of the social context, more double-edged in its implications, concerns the fact
that the social location of secondary school students is transient, linked to a brief stage in
the life course. It is useful to consider each contextual condition in turn.

Limited participation in employment

Participation in employment for most school students is confined to moderate weekly
hours and intermittent participation during the years of school attendance. Employment
is a minor element in a pattern of life more fully occupied with other activities such as
school-work and study, family life, sports and hobbies, and socialising. This implies a
diminution of the conditions that could activate precariousness. Limited participation
reduces exposure to workplace hazards, not only health and safety risks but also some of
the broader risks of precariousness. Short hours of employment can be fitted into the
demands of other aspects of life, softening the impact of low levels of control over hours.
Employer-led variation in work schedules and short notice of changes provoke com-
plaints from student-workers (McDonald et al., 2010: 21–22), but the problem of disrup-
tion is not as severe as the ‘desynching’ that can affect tertiary students working longer
hours in more varied work schedules (Woodman, 2012).

Access to an alternative source of income

Most secondary school students rely on parents rather than wages from their part-
time jobs to cover basic living costs such as food and shelter. Only a small minority
of school students in jobs, between 5% and 10%, state that they need to provide
income for their families (Abhayaratna et al., 2008: 93; McDonald et al., 2010: 16–
18). Most student-workers work in order to gain money, but generally for discretion-
ary spending or for a future expense such as a car (House of Representatives, 2009:
11–13).
Access to an alternative income source has been singled out as significant for under-
standing different work experiences in previous literature on casual workers and on pre-
carious workers in general (Kalleberg, 2011; Standing, 2011: 59). It allows students to
choose to limit their participation in employment. It limits the risk, prevalent in Australia,
that part-time employment will be associated with underemployment, whereby part-time
workers have to chase additional hours in either the same or a second job (ABS, 2015b).
Similarly, access to alternative income cushions employment insecurity, as job loss does
not threaten livelihood. The risk of school students being in poverty is not determined by
the wage levels in their part-time jobs; instead, it is determined much more directly by
the situation of the main earners in the household.
324 The Economic and Labour Relations Review 27(3)

Access to alternative career paths

Similarly, most student-workers are not dependent on the job in retail for long-term
career pathways. Students may see the part-time job as providing employability skills
that could assist in getting future jobs (Abhayaratna et al., 2008: 93), but most see suc-
cessful job search and career development in the future as dependent on other factors
such as educational achievement and perhaps family advice and assistance (McDonald
et al., 2011: 77–78).
Access to alternative career paths clearly softens the risks both of dismissal and lim-
ited job training. Dismissal is not a threat to career progression. Lack of formal training
is of little consequence for most student-workers, since the main source of skills devel-
opment for their long-term careers is located elsewhere – at secondary school or perhaps
in future higher education.

Stage of the life course

Discussion of long-term careers leads to a fourth consideration, which in effect over-
shadows each of the three contextual conditions cited above. Being a secondary school
student is a transient stage of the life course, lasting just a few years, prior to entering
the varied pathways to adulthood, including crucial school-to-work transitions (Furlong
and Kelly, 2005). Each of the elements most closely associated with this distinctive
social location – full-time school attendance, family financial support, participation in
part-time work after school or on the weekend, sports and hobbies and perhaps even
friendship networks – is likely to dissipate or disappear in the near future. The full-
time university or further education that follows secondary school for a growing pro-
portion of youth is less likely to be accompanied by full financial support from families,
leaving tertiary education students more reliant on part-time work and debt to meet
their living costs.
A life-course perspective is important for analysing the consequences of precarious
work for individual workers (Fuller, 2009; Mayer, 2004), and it is particularly important
when the workers in question are young and near the start of a life-course trajectory.
Analysis in terms of life stage has, however, double-edged implications for analysis of
the impact of precarious work. On the one hand, it could be argued that the transience
of the part-time job in retail reduces exposure to the hazards of precarious jobs. Research
has failed to find any long-term negative effects of combining school with part-time
paid work on either educational or employment outcomes (Anlezark and Lim, 2011;
Patton and Smith, 2009; Vickers, 2011: 107–113). Participation in part-time work for
students does not, as it does for adult women, lead to stalled careers and ‘wage scarring’
(Chalmers, 2013). Nor is there any firm evidence yet for the suggestive argument that
young workers may be ‘scarred’ by poor experiences in their initial part-time jobs so
that they adopt an ‘internalised flexibility’ and treat bad employment practices as nor-
mal (Morgan et al., 2013).
On the other hand, the life-course perspective reminds us that school students face
challenges in the next stages of their life course, including challenges associated with
episodes of precarious work. Australian research following two cohorts that were in later
Campbell and Price 325

secondary school in 1991 and 2005 points to the difficulties created by increasingly
unstable and insecure labour markets, which offer young workers fewer full-time entry-
level jobs leading on to secure employment, but more casualised jobs, both full-time and
part-time (Cuervo and Wyn, 2011). The erosion of traditional pathways from study to
work meant that many young workers from both cohorts struggled with precariousness,
including underemployment, poor wages and inadequate skill development, in their
post-school experiences (Wyn et al., 2010).
Discussion of insecure labour markets returns us to the first two levels of empirical
research on precariousness. It draws attention to important contextual forces such as
public policy, strongly influenced by neoliberalism, labour market deregulation, com-
petitive pressures on firms and the spread of new business practices (Kalleberg, 2011;
Rafferty and Yu, 2010). Overlapping these forces is the business cycle, which, in the
wake of the GFC, has been characterised by weak labour demand and sharp increases in
youth unemployment and underemployment (ABS, 2015b). This social context defines a
major challenge to youth who are particularly exposed to risks in post-school stages of
the life course, and it can intensify workforce fracturing, in which factors such as class,
location, gender and disability status increasingly differentiate work and life experiences
(Wyn et al., 2010).
The change in retail jobs described in a previous section (‘An example: secondary
school students working part-time’) is itself one expression of increasingly insecure
labour markets. In previous decades, retail offered a large number of full-time entry-level
jobs for young workers, but employers have steadily restructured most entry-level retail
jobs into casual part-time jobs, occupied by school students and tertiary students, while
recruitment into management is increasingly through recruitment at graduate or higher
certificate level (AWPA, 2014: 67–68). As a result, young school leavers who desire a
full-time retail job often face a particularly difficult school-to-work transition, while seek-
ing to earn a living wage and get a foot on the ladder of full-time work (Watson, 1994).
Discussion of youth pathways draws the analysis away from the impact of current
jobs, but that is no reason for dismissing the relevance of the longitudinal perspective.
Many students are already wrestling with what they see as the implications of insecure
labour markets. Indeed, for many student-workers, the future casts a shadow over their
current lives and shapes their decisions, such as what courses of study to choose. In this
sense, the future is a structural force that demands to be integrated into analysis of the
present.
A life-course perspective changes the conventional analysis of temporary and precari-
ous jobs in terms of transition matrices. The part-time jobs in retail held by secondary
school students are neither a ‘bridge’ towards other jobs nor a ‘trap’ (except perhaps for
students desiring a long-term career in the industry). Most student-workers look else-
where for the bridges to less precarious, good quality jobs, but finding these bridges has
become increasingly difficult in a context of increasingly insecure youth labour markets.

Summary
Precarious part-time jobs in retail can have negative effects on student-workers. Nevertheless,
this analysis suggests that the negative effects, both short-term and long-term, are modest.
326 The Economic and Labour Relations Review 27(3)

Very low wages and high employment insecurity do not, in this example, operate to produce
precarious workers or precarious lives in any meaningful sense.
The argument concerning modest effects in the present could be expressed in terms of
degree so that our example would figure as a case of hypo-precariousness to match the
‘hyper-precariousness’ attributed to migrant workers (Lewis et al., 2015). But our argu-
ment, consistent with critical realism, aims to reach beyond a descriptive account of the
degree of precariousness to include analysis of contextual conditions and how they oper-
ate to modify the impact of precariousness. A representation of this argument is pre-
sented in Figure 1.
This analysis also highlights the need to discuss structures associated with different
stages in the life course (Pocock and Charlesworth, 2015). In our example, the same
group of workers, although relatively insulated from risks of precarious work in the pre-
sent, are exposed to severe risks from precarious work in the immediate future. The shift
cannot be attributed to major changes either in the substance of the precarious work or in
subjective attributes; instead, it is mainly due to the underlying change in the workers’
social location. The crucial institutions and social relations that serve to cushion negative
effects at the current stage of the life course are missing – without being replaced by
anything equivalent – in subsequent stages, leaving the workers more clearly exposed to
the risks of precariousness in their work.

Conclusion
Research on precariousness spans at least five levels of application. The literature con-
tinues to struggle with the implications of precarious work (or poor job quality) for indi-
vidual workers. The temptation to leap freely from precarious work to precarious workers
(or precarious lives) should be resisted. The impact of precarious work is not uniform;
instead, it is contingent. At the same time, differences in experiences of precarious work
cannot be reduced to hypothetical differences in subjective attributes. The impact of
precarious work demands careful conceptualisation and empirical research, to analyse
both the particular form of precarious work and the differences among individual work-
ers that stem from social location and contextual conditions.
To improve conceptualisation, this article has used one ‘theory-relevant’ example. We
establish that the part-time retail jobs held by secondary school children are indeed pre-
carious, but we argue that the negative effects on the student-workers are modest. We
identify several contextual conditions, including limited participation, access to alterna-
tive sources of income and access to alternative career paths, and show how these tend to
cushion the potential impact of precariousness. Yet, the fact that the workers in this
example are school students, who will shortly exit this stage of the life course, is a pow-
erful reminder of the need to incorporate a longitudinal dimension and a general account
of labour restructuring into any analysis.
The example of secondary school students in part-time retail jobs is unusual, but the
conceptual framework developed to analyse this example can be adapted to other experi-
ences of precarious work, both in Australia and other countries. The analysis thereby
opens up new paths for future research on the increasingly important topic of precarious-
ness and precarious work.
 Campbell and Price
327

Figure 1. Precarious work and precarious workers: the case of school students.
328 The Economic and Labour Relations Review 27(3)

Acknowledgements
Thanks to all who commented on earlier versions of the paper: John Burgess, Fiona Macdonald,
Sara Charlesworth, Martina Boese, Janine Berg and members of the Work/Industry Research
Group at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Thanks also to the journal referees.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this
article.

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Author biographies
Iain Campbell is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Applied Social Research at RMIT
University. An authority on casual work, he has conducted case-study research in occupations and
industries such as retail, cleaning services, legal services and nursing. He has published books and
numerous articles on policy debates in work, employment regulation and social welfare and con-
tributed expert evidence in several major industrial cases. His areas of expertise include employ-
ment, unemployment and work-time patterns, temporary migrant labour and precarious work.
Robin Price is a Senior Lecturer in Management in the Queensland University of Technology
Business School. She has worked in the retail industry in management and training roles. Robin’s
main research is on labour-use strategies and their interplay with the regulatory framework, com-
parative trade union strategies and young people’s experience and knowledge of work.