‘People deserve to have certainty’: the growing push for ‘roster justice’

Alex* loves his job. It's an interesting workplace filled with interesting people. He is so committed, he has an app on his phone with a credo outlining values the company expects its employees to uphold.

The only issue is that Alex, who asked his real name not be used, feels as if he is always on-call and what he says is unpredictable rostering means he can never be sure when he is working.

The problems caused by variable rosters affects hundreds of thousands of workers across Australia. From workers in the arts and aged care to casual and part-time retail and hospitality workers, many can have their work days change from week to week, month to month. Now unions and some politicians are beginning to call for "roster justice" - for the right to predictable and stable shifts.

It is an issue Alex knows intimately. The workers at the Apple store where Alex works voted in early December to strike on Christmas Eve as part of an ongoing industrial dispute which includes, among demands for better pay and conditions, a push for clear work times and guaranteed set days off.

The impact on workers from unstable rosters reverberates throughout their lives, and it can be particularly difficult for workers with caring responsibilities. Alex says the lack of predictability makes it hard to schedule his time off, and even harder to achieve long-term life goals like buying a house.

"It's about planning for a family, planning for friends. It's frustrating when you have no idea when you're going to work on a particular day," Alex says. "People deserve to have certainty restored to their lives just so they can plan for life."

In a statement Apple said it was "committed to providing an excellent experience for our customers and teams, and proud to reward all of our valued team members in Australia with strong compensation and exceptional benefits".

Dr Gemma Beale, from Flinders University's Australian Industrial Transformation Institute, says the phrase "roster justice" refers to what is known in academia as "the problem of work-time insecurity".

"Work-time security is about your access of hours of work, the control over hours worked and the predictability and consistency of working hours over time," Dr Beale says.

"The greater the fluctuation in your work-time security, the more precarious your job is. It's about whether you can reasonably predict whether you will be working week to week and whether that's consistent week to week."

Dr Beale says high levels of work-time insecurity can profoundly impact a person's health and wellbeing. Though it primarily interferes with basic tasks like maintaining a proper diet, regular exercise or sleep, it can also have other effects like stopping people from attending doctor's appointments, caring for family, establishing relationships, or maintaining existing ones.

Over time, the effects of these compound.

"There's research that shows high rates of work-time insecurity delays buying a house, relationship formation, marriage and parenthood," Dr Beale says.

Nearly one in four workers in Australia were employed on a casual basis as of August 2021, according to a 2021 review by the parliamentary library, with over two-thirds of all casual workers not guaranteed a minimum number of hours each week.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, roughly one in six Australians work on shifts and more than one in five are usually required to be on call or standby. Variable or unpredictable rosters can impact full-time and part-time workers, and while it can affect professions considered prestigious such as health and law, much of the political and union focus on predictability in rostering has focused on people working in casual employment.

Josh Cullinan, the secretary for the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, claims some employers deliberately rely on high levels of insecurity as part of their business model, particularly where young people are employed.

"Too often we see workers, five, 10, 15 years later look back and realise they weren't able to live life to the fullest because they had to be available to their employer 24-7," Cullinan says.

David Alexander, the chief of policy and advocacy at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says Australia's employment laws already provide ways for casual workers to move into more permanent positions.

"Australia's workplace laws rightly provide employers and employees a choice between job types that are permanent and predictable or flexible and tailored to their own individual needs," Alexander said.

"Casual employment can offer significant benefits to both employers and employees through greater flexibility."

When the employment minister, Tony Burke, was contacted for comment his office directed the Guardian to a speech at the National Press Club and the first reading speech of the government's industrial relations bill in which Burke flagged changes to make job security an objective of the act, a limit on consecutive contracts and an opportunity for "arbitration" if a request for a roster change was rejected.

In October, Labor senators joined Greens members of the Senate select committee on work and care to call for "roster justice" to be included in an amended Fair Work Act and the government has flagged further reforms in the new year. Earlier, at the skills and jobs summit, the independent MP Zoe Daniels proposed giving casual and part-time workers at least four weeks' notice of work schedules, as part of a series of recommendations for reform.

Barbara Pocock, a Greens senator, says change is well overdue.

"Many business can predict exactly how many granny smith apples they will need next week, they can predict their ongoing workforce needs, but they aren't taking steps to look after their workforce to make sure they have predictability," she says. "That really needs to change."

Carolina Cooksey says change is possible.

The 19-year-old has done most of her growing up at the bookshop. She started at Better Read Than Dead in Sydney's inner west as a Christmas casual in 2019 while she was still in high school. At the time she figured it was better work than hospitality. A job at the bookstore offered social cache and meant she was effectively being paid to read.

Soon, however, she was among workers drawn into a protracted labour dispute that received considerable media attention. There were many issues at play, but among them was a realisation by staff they had become trapped in casual employment, subject to an unpredictable rostering system that meant they were always on call.

Cooksey's fight ended when an agreement was struck that gave bookstore staff a path to part-time employment and certainty around rostering - a big win for a small workplace.

"For me, personally, that was really significant," says Cooksey, who is now part-time.

"Just having that predictability takes away a layer of stress."