News & Events
Work-life, low pay and vocational education and training
By Barbara Pocock
Campus Review
16 March 2009
In Australia work-life pressures are most commonly discussed with respect to professionals: managers, engineers, doctors, lawyers and journalists who juggle demanding jobs with household and personal life. Many of these workers have completed their professional qualifications and hit work life pressures when they have their children, especially women. Long hours and demanding jobs are central to their work-life pressures. However, there is another work-life story that receives much less public attention and is just as pressing: the work-life situation of low paid workers, many of whom aspire to higher earnings but battle both income and time poverty to find a way out of their work-life collision.
Consider, for example, the situation of childcare workers who are usually women. They face very truncated pay and career ladders, often have children of their own, and often face complicated commuting patterns as they put together their jobs, care and domestic lives. They are short of both time and money. They cannot easily buy solutions like pre-prepared food, childcare, or other supports. Many depend on public transport and face high rents. While work-life pressures are often significant for higher paid workers who work long hours in demanding jobs, there is evidence that work-life pressures are comparable for lower income (less than $30,000) households when we hold working hours constant. Unfortunately many low paid workers have less access to flexible working conditions and they have less access to paid hours to do training, creating additional barriers to work-life balance and to training.
What is the role of education and training in assisting low paid workers to move into more secure, rewarding, higher paid work? What would facilitate their success in VET and what gets in the way? What else can help these workers secure better outcomes - for themselves, their households and their employers - over their life course?
These questions are at the heart of a research partnership between the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) and the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia. The first report of this work is now being released.
Who are the low paid?
More than one in ten full-time Australian workers are low-paid, with no signs that this proportion declined in the past fifteen years of economic boom, and every prospect of an increase with the current economic crisis. Many of these workers are casual, women or young and they are especially concentrated in the services sector including accommodation, cafes, restaurants, retail, cultural, health, community and recreational services. In putting together their own work-life solutions, many higher paid workers depend on the support of low paid services sector workers, like those in childcare, aged care, hotel, restaurant and community sector jobs. The latter group make up Australia's working poor.
For some, low pay is a transitory phenomena. However, many low paid workers - and probably the majority from what we can tell from longitudinal analysis - are in low paid jobs for longer than a year or two. While some live in households with a decent income and can rely on some support from others - parents, partners or some form of pension - many cannot. Low pay is not just a 'life-stage' experience of the young: many older workers are affected.
Low paid workers and VET
Low paid workers make up a large slice of VET students: two-thirds of 2007 VET graduates were employed in low-paid occupations in the in six months prior to their training. Women and younger VET students were especially likely to have been in low paid occupations, and many had been employed part-time and/or casually.
Analysis of student outcomes in VET suggests that just over two-thirds of VET graduates in low paid occupations do not experience an increase in their occupational level or earnings on completing their training. The financial returns that accrue for training in lower level VET qualifications are low, and it is in these courses that students from low socio-economic backgrounds are concentrated.
While there are many reasons to train, higher income is a primary motivator. This suggests that access to training is only part of the story for lower paid workers in finding their way to higher earnings and occupational advancement. Opportunities for promotion and the structure and potential for rewards after training is also important, as is drawing attention to the nature of job design, occupational classifications, pay rates and the worth and recognition of training.
Literacy problems are also an important issue shaping the working lives of low paid workers. Analysis of the 2006 ABS Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALLS) shows that, not surprisingly, workers with poor literacy are more than twice as likely to be employed in low paid occupations than in other occupations. Unfortunately poor literacy has more negative consequences for women than men. These findings suggest that training related to literacy is very important to assisting low paid workers out of low paid jobs.
What gets in the way of training?
Education and training has an important role to play in the working life trajectories of the working poor. But personal characteristics like fear of change and its possible economic risks, low confidence, high care loads, exhaustion and age can limit low paid workers' willingness to participate in VET. Job characteristics can also be influential, including insecurity at work, lack of paid training leave and employer resistance to the accumulation of qualifications that increase labour costs. Occupational characteristics are also important: for example, some care workers are not interested in taking on more senior positions because the perceived increase in responsibilities and training is poorly rewarded.
If workers can see that higher qualifications are not well rewarded, then policy actions that focus simply on the supply of training or qualifications are not enough: we need to also work on the demand for, effective utilisation of, and reward for training. The underutilisation of skills is more evident in low paid than high paid occupations. For example, existing analysis tells us that 38 per cent of elementary clerical, sales and service workers with VET as their highest qualifications believe they are not using their skills or abilities. This compares to 6 per cent of advanced clerical and administrative occupations.
We also need to address the barriers that appear to stand in the way of training in low paid occupations like shallow career paths, poor returns on skill, insecure jobs that make access to training difficult, lack of on-the-job training opportunities, multiple jobs and employer under-investment in training in some occupations. How widespread these potential barriers are, which are the most important, and other barriers that affect the low paid are the subject of our ongoing research. If we want low paid workers to share in the rewards of economic life, and to maximise their chances of upward income and occupational mobility, we need to know more about what works, what gets in the way, and what to do about it.
For the full paper 'Low paid workers, changing patterns of work and life, and participation in VET'; visit http://www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2104.html. For further information about the project 'Low paid workers, Work-life and VET' and other background papers, visit http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkeinstitute/cwl/projects/low-paid-and-vet.asp
Barbara Pocock is Director of the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia.
