Regarding the conditions of casual and part time work for secondary and tertiary students in the Campbelltown region: An inquiry into the conditions of studying, casual workers in the Campbelltown region with a focus on the 'fast food' industry.
Damian Doyle, 10 December 2002. (Unpublished paper)
This brief paper is based upon experiences and observations over a period of seven years within a number of Campbelltown's 'fast food' workplaces. It is not claimed that these experiences are indicative of the industry or the region as a whole. The conditions observed represent, however, a notable portion of the workplaces open to secondary and tertiary students who join the casual workforce. It is hoped that these notes will encourage discussion of and by those young workers employed in situations such as those outlined herein.
Doing the right thing, or "why do kids work?"
The pressures of the market economy come to bear most forcefully upon the working class and many children are directly exposed to these pressures from the time they reach the legal age of employment. For the majority of those who choose to continue with their education, employment takes the form of casual or part time work, generally, but not exclusively, in service industries including 'fast food'.
Secondary and tertiary students take on casual and part-time employment for reasons ranging from a simple desire for financial independence to dire economic necessity. At either end of this scale the external factors are self-evident. The wider community is in general agreement that employment for children is the correct response to the contemporary economic climate. In a sense, it can be said that the market system dictates that students find employment. In many working class households it becomes a financial imperative that young family members join the casual workforce.
It follows that, when this economic impulse is less pronounced, prevailing social conventions impact upon the decision to become a casual worker at an early age. In Campbelltown, alternate views to those presented by media and advertising have little or no impact on the decisions taken by young people when it comes to shopping, socialising, and getting a job. Young people who grasp the 'importance' of financial independence and adopt the values of materialism are congratulated for their acquiescence to society's consumerist demands.
In short, young people who find employment while studying are acting as the system requires, and deserve to be rewarded. In countless instances, this theory does not correspond with the reality. Students who take on the responsibility of casual employment rarely if ever enjoy long-term benefit from their experiences. Kids who do the right thing are taken for a ride.
An anecdote may illustrate this point better, and this particular tale touches upon many of the issues to be raised below. Brylie is the sixteen year old eldest daughter of a working class household in the suburb of Minto. At home, Brylie contends with difficulties brought about by unemployment and excessive gambling. She is often left with sole responsibility for younger siblings. These difficulties have already impacted negatively upon her secondary schooling.
It is clear that Brylie's decision to seek out casual or part-time employment was the result of a combination of financial imperatives and familial obligations. By anyone's measure, social or economic, she had made a sound decision. For someone of her age the best opportunity for employment was within the service or retail industry, and Brylie gained a position with a fast food store. She accepted the rates of pay, around six or seven dollars an hour, and did what she could to keep her job, go to school, and help out at home.
The system that created - and perpetuates - the environment in which this young worker was raised only let her down. In the real world, Brylie found herself underpaid and unfairly treated. Specifically, she was kept ignorant of her rights as a worker and was denied penalty and overtime rates of pay. Ultimately, Brylie saw her hours dwindle to nothing. An unsympathetic management structure took exception to the effect that her family and education commitments (which her employer was aware of from the day she was hired) had upon her availability for late-night, mid-week shifts.
This situation is not a cliche, a generalisation, nor a fiction. Of course there are many other situations which lead young workers into casual employment. For many tertiary students, for instance, the lure of flexible hours makes the fast food industry an attractive employment option. Regardless of the factors that motivate young people to take on work commitments while at school or university, there is evidence of disturbing trends in the workplaces which they are drawn to.
Rates of pay, awareness of workers rights
Any discussion of work conditions for students must take wages into account. Some school students, without the financial commitments of tertiary students, seem happy to accept the low hourly rates they receive. Kids can earn as little as four or five dollars an hour when they first commence employment. For the average fifteen year old, the fact that they have a job precludes any discussion of the conditions of their employment. The persistent 'be grateful to have a job' argument is instilled in our young workers by parents, perhaps jaded and cynical after their own working experiences, and employers, keen to hire the young, cheap, eager workers. Essentially, the prevalence of this attitude, at least superficially, has meant that the question of young workers' wages has been largely ignored or dismissed.
Tertiary students will find themselves at the upper end of the wage scale. In the writer's experience, this means between ten and thirteen dollars an hour. At eighteen, and armed with a driver's license, uni students can leave fast food for better paid positions elsewhere. It is fair to say that employers are happy to see this happen as it allows for cheaper labour to be introduced as a replacement for departed workers. Those 'older' and more expensive workers who are slow to move on can expect a reduction in their hours.
It is not uncommon for workers to be switched from a part-time position, with guaranteed minimum weekly hours, to a casual position, with no guarantee of hours but a slightly higher rate of pay. A nineteen-year-old girl at a local outlet was convinced to accept the casual arrangement because of the higher wage. In her first year of university, and her third year as a worker, this young girl was exposed to the reality of her position in the casual workforce. Within four weeks her hours had dropped to zero. She was not sacked, nor asked to leave; she was simply not required. The boss made a quip about "the real world".
Coupled with low pay rates is the issue of overtime and penalty rates, and in many parts of the fast food sector these entitlements are unheard of. It is likely that fast food businesses in the Campbelltown region are not exceptional in this regard, but it is an issue which bears consideration when local leaders extol the virtues of casual work for young people and so often praise those employers who provide such "opportunities". In the past ten years, public holiday rates have been eroded from traditional levels and Sunday rates have become all but non-existent. Unions are responsible for this insofar as awards are concerned, but at the local level employers have adopted workplace agreements to the same end. In a traditional working class area, waged workers are learning from an early age that penalty rates are a privilege.
It is necessary to consider, too, the prevalence of unpaid overtime in the fast food workplaces of Campbelltown. It is a common experience that on a busy night the after-hours clean up can stretch out until very late, particularly if workers are tiring. On these occasions, it is at the discretion of the manager whether the workers will be paid for the time worked or for the time rostered, the implication being that the work should have been completed more quickly. For the most part, this overtime is unpaid in order to "encourage" workers to work faster. A shift supervisor at a local "family restaurant" had his decision over-ridden by management when he judged that two workers should be paid - at the normal rate only - one hour each for the time they stayed back. It was a weeknight and both young workers' parents were waiting in the carpark. Their hourly rate was less than seven dollars. The two workers were unaware of the amendment to their timesheet until pay day the following week.
Wage levels, while seldom questioned, nonetheless play a huge role in shaping the relationships between workers. Young employees, all eager for more shifts, immediately recognise that management treats workers according to the relative cost of their labour. The new recruit on less than five dollars an hour will be confined to the washing up area for five or six hours on three or more nights of the week. The university student, pleading for more hours to meet financial obligations, will work one three hour shift per week, and only during a period which management knows will be busy. When a worker requires time off or is sick, the shift that they are unable to work is available only to those coworkers who are on an equal or lower rate of pay. In this way, young people learn that they are in competition with their coworkers and that competition is seldom fair.
This awareness does not extend, however, to basic issues of workers rights. The vast majority of young fast food workers are ignorant regarding breaks, length of shifts, overtime entitlements, and so on. Union representation is anathema to an industry based almost exclusively on child, student, and casual labour and Campbelltown workplaces are virtually bereft of workers' representation of any sort.
Five years ago, the new owners of a local fast food store actively discouraged union membership by refusing to deduct fees from employees' wages. It was a successful strategy. A year later, only one employee remained a member of the union. Following the transfer of ownership of the store to this local franchise operator, and after a series of sackings and resignations, a union representative visited the store. This unannounced visit took place on a weekday afternoon when most workers were at school or university. Two employees were present. The following morning, a bundle of leaflets that detailed the benefits of union membership and outlined the rights of workers in the fast food industry was found in the store's rubbish bin. This employer operates several fast food outlets in the Campbelltown area and employs hundreds of local schoolkids and uni students.
In another workplace, also a "family restaurant", young workers were aware of their entitlement to breaks and penalty rates of pay. They quickly became aware, too, of the attitude management took to such entitlements. Staff soon found that a four hour shift, in which they were entitled to a fifteen minute break, had become a three and three-quarter hour shift.
Tasks within the workplace
The discussion of rates of pay leads us to consider the roles for which these rates apply. For many, this simply means waiting on tables, preparing food, and pouring drinks. There is no question that the social interaction and workplace experience gleaned from this kind of work can have a positive effect upon young people entering the workforce, albeit on a casual basis. Young workers are often, however, asked to perform duties which either fall outside the prescribed role for which they were employed or which are simply unreasonable given the nature of their employment.
Cleaning toilets and air ducts may well be defined as duties that are outside the scope of a worker's position as a kitchen hand or waitress. They certainly are not duties listed when the young worker is interviewed and hired. Many young workers go directly from school to their workplace only to spend an evening performing cleaning jobs using various industrial-strength chemicals. The health and safety considerations aside, as they so often are, this work is dispiriting, divorced from the true business of the workplace, and antisocial. That is to say, employers ensure that their young workers are alienated from both the results of their labour (i.e. the product they believed they were employed to produce) and their coworkers. This situation exacerbates the social divisions in the workplace created by the wage issues touched upon above.
A clear example of this situation was seen a year or two ago when a sixteen year old boy was employed to wash dishes in a fast food outlet in Campbelltown. He left after six months having spoken to no more than three of his twenty-five coworkers throughout the entire period of his employment.
Unreasonable duties are just as easy to identify in the local fast food workplace. These may be defined as any tasks that have a level of complexity or difficulty out of proportion to the level of pay or with the level of resources and experience at the disposal of the young worker. An instance of this is relatively common in the kitchen area of one of the 'family restaurants' mentioned earlier.
The dishwashing machine, central to the workplace experience of so many young male employees, is particularly prone to overheating or breaking down, primarily during peak periods. Management makes no effort to have the machine repaired quickly, preferring instead to have kitchen equipment washed by hand in a kitchen not fitted for such a manual process. Invariably, unpaid overtime occurs at these times. The conclusion drawn by the workers is that they are being punished for the failure of the poorly serviced machine. In several instances observed over the last three years, the machine was left in this condition for a period of days. Surely it can be said that the expectations placed upon workers in situations such as this, which is clearly beyond their control, represent unreasonable demands for low-paid workers with little or no workplace experience.
Those who argue that workplace experience is gained through these sorts of casual employment conditions seriously misread the precise nature of fast food workplaces. If the pressure on young workers to perform tasks outside their primary role or for which they are ill-equipped provides any lesson, it is that employers will find ways to cut costs through cheap labour. This is not lost on workers. In the above instances, young workers concluded that avoiding the cost of contract cleaners or machine maintenance was preferable to providing a fair and rewarding workplace experience and, significantly, that this practice was acceptable and not to be questioned. This is the "experience" which fast food operators thrust upon local students who are compelled to join the casual workforce.
Hours of work - flexibility for whom?
Proponents of casual employment have touted flexibility as one of its greatest attractions. There is little doubt that this acts as a "pull" factor in the numbers of secondary and tertiary students who seek out casual employment. Flexibility, though, is another area of the fast food workplace experience that requires greater scrutiny. A large proportion of conflicts in fast food workplaces populated by students arises from issues of worker availability and rostered hours of work.
Balancing varied family, work, social, sporting or study commitments represents a challenge to anyone, yet students who take on casual or part-time work are expected to balance all of these things successfully. If employers in the fast food sector offered the flexibility that they claim to, workplace policies would be supportive of the needs of working students. Sporting commitments would be respected, university hours would be accommodated, school children would not be expected to work til midnight during the week, and management would be approachable when workers wished to discuss their current commitments and priorities.
Examples to the contrary appear across virtually every fast food workplace in the Campbelltown area. A university student who asked for a Saturday night off was rostered to work regardless and was given a disciplinary notice when he arrived late after playing cricket. A school girl who asked not to be rostered to work later than nine thirty on a weeknight saw her rostered hours diminish to three per week.
The issue of rostering is central to many workplace disputes. While verbal agreements or company policies stipulate that weekly rosters are prepared and posted two weeks ahead, this seldom occurs. Young workers, invariably juggling several commitments, are required to advise of their availability for work well in advance. In one local workplace at least, disputes over rostered hours of work often result in a compulsory, unpaid "staff meeting". On a Saturday or Sunday morning or on a Monday or Tuesday night when the store is quiet, the store manager reminds workers of their commitment to their place of employment. In this same "flexible" environment, workers are asked to arrange replacement staff to work their rostered shift when they are sick or unable to work at late notice.
Training, references, workplace experience
As part of an international operation the fast food workplace is prefabricated in every sense of the word, from the building itself to the employment and management practices within its walls. It is a reasonable expectation that workplace procedures in such an environment would receive a degree of scrutiny; that is, employee pay rates would be monitored, training regulated, policies enforced. Many young workers in Campbelltown have discovered that this is not the case.
Large companies spend time and money on "packages" and "kits" for employee training programs but their independent operators in the suburbs rarely put them to use. For the most part, training involves one or two three-hour shifts working alongside a more experienced, but equally young, coworker. When training procedures are followed they rest for the most part on unpaid weekend training sessions and "self-directed" training, such as workbooks to be completed at home or at the conclusion of shifts.
While the dangers of a lack of training in areas of health and safety and the use of machinery are self-evident, there are broader issues arising from a lack of formal or certified workplace training. It is a regular occurrence for a worker to spend several years in the conditions outlined above only to emerge with nothing tangible to show for their experience.
Petty managerial despotism
Without digressing too far into an area which will attract criticism of the "that happens everywhere" variety, it is important to identify the prevalence of favouritism and discrimination in the casual fast food workplace. Managerial discretion plays a determining role in each of areas addressed above. As examples have consistently demonstrated, workers pitted against one another and are taught from a young age to accept that decisions in the workplace are seldom based on fairness. It should be noted that in each of the instances outlined in this paper the outcome would be drastically different had the worker involved been a relative, friend, or "favourite" of the manager giving out instructions and passing arbitrary judgement.
Besides this overt unfairness in the daily relations between employer and employee, workers are painfully aware of their subordination. The manner with which young employees are addressed resembles a bad-tempered parent or disciplining teacher and it is not uncommon for workers to be shouted at. This is completely contrary to the notion that entering the world of paid labour will engender respect and independence. Young workers are made to feel inferior and incapable. Conversely, the results are far more positive when areas of worker performance or attitude are approached with a tempered and respectful tone, and notably, all of the corporate training material stresses just this point. This approach is lost on managers who, it must be said, derive some pleasure from treating their young workers in this way.
This point cannot be overstated. In light of those issues discussed above, it is important to consider the impact that talking down to workers can have on those already demoralised by their workplace situation. An ill-considered verbal attack can reinforce the sense of uselessness that already accompanies a poor rate of pay. Once again, it should be remembered that these are young people at the beginning of their working lives.
Worker resistance?
Expressions of worker dissatisfaction and frustration can take many forms and too often are simply dismissed as bad behaviour or ingratitude. It may be important to consider, however, whether this is indeed the case. Acts of defiance by young workers vary greatly in their nature and extremity and many actions which could be interpreted as rebellious or defiant may in fact be nothing more than careless. Nonetheless, there is sufficient evidence to support the proposition that young workers do rebel against their conditions and express this rebellion in the few ways available to someone locked into a job of necessity. It is important to acknowledge that our young workers are conscious of and resistant to the world that they are being so forcefully introduced to.
Blatant defiance of management is still the domain of the ratbag, and most young workers, conscious of the need to preserve their rostered hours, are acquiescent. The biggest coercive instrument available to employers in the fast food sector, and one wielded with impunity, is the knowledge that most workers are there because they need to be.
Yet, when pushed far enough - at the end of a late night, after a talking down by the manager, after finding their roster not suited to their other commitments - young workers have been known to respond by hurting the bosses who can so easily hurt them. In some instances, machinery may be deliberately damaged or neglected. At other times, the rubbish bin may be left open at night so that a mess is found the next morning. Commonly, a lack lustre approach will be taken to tasks considered unfair, such as mopping floors or cleaning toilets. Less drastically, kids will swap shifts with their workmates, or take a sickie (usually unpaid, but troublesome for the manager) in order to avoid working a shift with a manager they do not like.
Less common however, is the occurrence of worker discussion of conditions of employment or rates of pay. There is a broad acceptance that these things cannot be challenged. Most often, whispered conversations which could be considered subversive centre on the preferential treatment meted out to the boss� favourites and friends.
Toward a discussion of these issues - concluding remarks
The prevailing community perception of the benefits of casual and part-time work in the fast food sector has been alluded to throughout this paper. In Campbelltown, employers who hire students are praised for fostering the interpersonal skills of young workers, providing opportunities for financial independence and career development, and exposing young people to the realities of the contemporary workplace. This paper urges the local community to ask two questions. Firstly, are these claimed benefits the rule or the exception? Secondly, what are the general conditions of employment for the majority of students who work in fast food?
Consider the overall situation portrayed by the anecdotal evidence and observations presented by this brief paper. Students go to work because they are compelled, either for family or social reasons, or for economic ones. Invariably, student workers are paid rates which only an employer would consider fair, yet their responsibilities and expectations are considerable. Training is often shabby and without any useful certification. Young workers may be led to feel alienated from their work, their coworkers, and their boss; some rebel, others simply fall off the edge.
This brief exploration of the conditions endured by student workers in Campbelltown's fast food workplaces reveals a pattern of low-wage exploitation. It might also be said, with some conviction, that these conditions represent a unique system of class oppression; one designed not only to extract labour at low cost for the benefit of industry, but to condition the children of working class families for a ready acceptance of conditions which will come to dominate their future working lives. The constant appearance of new fast food outlets in the suburban landscape is an indication of the profits generated by this system at the expense of young people, predominantly students.
While the conditions and situations described in this paper may not be immediately apparent to the casual observer there is little doubt that they are to those who find employment is such circumstances. To a great extent parents and teachers are conscious of these issues. In Campbelltown, school newsletters and student assemblies urge HSC students to resist the pressures to work long and late shifts. Tertiary student bodies constantly highlight the effects of working hours and conditions on academic performance. That is to say, it is unreasonable to suggest that there is no community awareness of the conditions that young workers are subject to. So why is there no discussion? Why have these young people been abandoned to the whim of market forces and the profit motive?
Traditionally it could be expected that unions would raise their voices in defence of workers who experienced conditions such as those outlined here. The key unions which claim to represent workers in this type of casual employment are silent, even with regard to simple issues such as rostering, training, dirty jobs, inflexible hours, and overtime rates. The unions themselves have accepted the new economic dispensation and the adverse effect it has upon school kids and students in the casual workforce.