Part-Time Employment, Gender and Employee Participation in Illawarra Workplaces

The growth in non-standard forms of employment has major implications for the effectiveness of employee participation mechanisms in the workplace, whether direct or indirect (representative). Representative forms of participation, such as consultative committees in particular, do not seem as easily accessible to casual or part-time employees. Since the majority of part-time and casual employees are female, women may also be disproportionately excluded from participation by their employment status. However, the literature on participation rarely addresses these major contextual aspects. This paper analyses survey data from the Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (IRWIRS) to test the hypothesis that part-time employees’ access to participatory mechanisms in the workplace is less than that enjoyed by their full-time colleagues, and finds that this is confirmed for the Illawarra region.