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Who Cleans up? The Declining Earnings Position of Cleaners in Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Sasha Holley  and
Al Rainnie
Sasha Holley
Affiliation:
PhD candidate, University of Sydney
Al Rainnie
Affiliation:
Curtin University, Western Australia
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Abstract

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Neoliberal policies of industrial relations decentralisation and privatisation have transformed the economic landscape of Australia in the last 20 years. The primary objective of these policies has been to enhance wealth and prosperity by improving productivity and flexibility of the workforce and competition and accountability in the market. Yet the evidence suggests that precarious workers are not benefiting from this increased prosperity, indeed they suffer by comparison with all other workers. Cleaners are a subset of precarious workers who have been hard hit by the dual impacts of labour market decentralisation and privatisation. This study finds quantitative evidence of an increasing gap in earnings between cleaners and other workers in Australia since the onset of workplace relations decentralisation and the proliferation of privatisation in the mid 1990s. We locate our argument in recent debates about the nature of variegated neoliberalism, the emergence of the networked economy, and the implications of these developments for the nature of work and employment.

Keywords

J31J42J590Cleanersincome disparitynetworked economyoutsourcingprecarious workprivatisation and decentralisationvulnerablelow-paid workers
Type
Symposium
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 23 , Issue 1: Carbon Markets: Inherent Limitations and Complementary Policies , February 2012 , pp. 143 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2012

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