Labor has a campaign commitment which will be unpopular with some university managements

Buried in yesterday’s economic plan Labor commits to “empowering the Fair Work Commission to turn insecure jobs into more secure ones and regulating the gig economy.”

The present legislation that covers converting casual university jobs into continuing ones has not delivered – universities have interpreted its requirements so narrowly that dozens of people have qualified out of hundreds, indeed thousands, at large institutions. Uni Melbourne offered continuing jobs to 72 casuals out of 7700 on the books under the existing process under the FW act process (CMM November 15 2021).