The Weekly Job Scoop: Casual Employment

Casual Employment does not mean what many people think it means. Sure casual employment may mean coming to work in flip flops and a Hawaiian shirt. On the other hand the term Casual Employment is generally similar to a part time employment but with more money involved to offset the risks of not being regularly and gainfully employed. In the United States where I live people who are part time employed are generally paid significantly less. There are various reasons for this but most importantly the employers do not pay for work they do not value. Unions have also helped people with steady work gain access to more money and benefits gradually though this is always being undermined. Many other factors both define and drive how the mechanisms of Casual Employment and Part Time employment work. The benefits of being employed part time is that we can be mobile. For instance part time employees will drive cross country and help with a harvest then drive back and help with construction. This mobility does give people a great deal of freedom to do things they want like starting a business and taking year long vacations. The negatives of being casually employed is that we become more susceptible to being abused, exploited, used and manipulated. But we can always walk away. Employers have less control in that sense because they never really extended us the necessary job security in the first place. Many of my best jobs were part time. The employers seemed to throw in lunch and other things that regular jobs of mind never did. I also worked independently for people and recieved the biggest pay checks ever and people were more satisfied than any boss of mine ever was. So there are many sides to the coin. Much of this has to do with attitudes and beliefs of the people you work for. Some employers really understand that work is tough and do a good job compensating. Others like to just use people and give them sand. Employment ethics is a topic for anouther day but I would suffice it to say that it is generally severly lacking on the employer side of things. People work so hard and get essentially nothing.