The Diversity of Casual Contract Employment

„X The ABS definition of a ¡¥casual employee¡¦ includes: ƒ{ many workers who do not have a casual employment contract; ƒ{ a large group whose work is not casual (in the sense of being occasional, irregular or short term); and ƒ{ aggregates across distinct groups of casual contract employees who have very different entitlements and work arrangements. „X In August 1999, more than one in ten people categorised as casual employees by the ABS were in fact owner managers. This upward bias in the data has increased since the late 1980s and is most evident for people working full-time. „X Using alternative data from a new irregular ABS survey, it is estimated that there were 1.5 million casual contract employees in August 1998 (equivalent to 17.7 per cent of employed persons, compared to 23.2 per cent who would have satisfied the ABS definition of a casual employee). „X In August 1998, 95 per cent of casual contract employees had an implicit contract for ongoing employment, only 4 per cent had a job which their employer had indicated was short term, and many perceived that they were able to progress to an ongoing contract job. „X More than a third of casual contract employees had an implicit contract for ongoing employment and regular earnings in August 1998. Many of these ¡¥ongoing casuals¡¦ have been granted entitlements associated with ongoing employment (such as long service leave) because the true nature of their work is ongoing. „X However, 80 per cent of casual contract employees in August 1998 were not protected by unfair dismissal laws, 62 per cent had irregular earnings (excluding overtime), and 40 per cent wanted to work more hours. They were also concentrated in low skill occupations „X The welfare impacts of particular job traits will depend on the preferences of those affected. Casual contract employees tend to be young, female, and full-time dependent students. A large minority (29 per cent in August 1998) are aged over 24 and have dependants, although this group is more likely to have employment conditions closer to ongoing contract employees. „X Hence, whether an employee has a casual contract provides little information about his or her welfare. Where the concern is about so- called ¡¥precarious¡¦ employment, analysts need to identify such employment on the basis of work arrangements rather than the type of employment contract.casual contract employment - casual employees - forms of employment survey - job traits - employee welfare

Fixed-term employees in Australia: incidence and characteristics

This paper presents an analysis of fixed-term employment in Australia or 3.3 per cent of employed persons in 2000. It finds that fixed-term employees are largely concentrated in Education (30 per cent of fixed- term employees in August 1998), Health and community services (18 per cent) and in the occupational category of Professionals (44 per cent). Just over 50 per cent worked in the public sector. Fixed-term employees are slightly more likely to be female and younger than ongoing employees.employees - fixed-term employment - ongoing employees

Self-Employed Contractors in Australia: Incidence and Characteristics

This paper presents an analysis of self-employed contracting in Australia. The analysis covers all self-employed contractors, including dependent and independent contractors. The paper finds that self- employed contractors have become more common in Australia over the past 20 years. In August 1998, 10 per cent of employed persons, or 844 000 individuals, worked as self-employed contractors.contractors - contracting - self-employed - labour force - forms of employment - dependent contractors - independent contractors

Unemployment and re-employment of displaced workers

Examines the incidence and adjustment experiences of workers who are displaced by economic change. Since the mid-1970s, the aggregate annual rate of retrenchment has fluctuated in a counter-cyclical pattern around a relatively stable long-term trend of about 5 per cent. The paper shows that the probability of retrenchment and the nature of post-retrenchment adjustment varies between different groups of workers and depends on general economic conditions.unemployment - re-employment - employment - displaced workers - labour - retrenchment - occupations - casual employment - job

The growth of non-traditional employment: are jobs becoming more precarious?

Examines the limitations of statistics for the analysis of non- traditional employment. Particular attention is given to problems interpreting the measure of casual employees in data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Much of the discussion about non- traditional employment in Australia has drawn on the ABS measure of casual employees because it is one of the few regularly published measures of non-traditional employment. It shows that the share of all employed persons who are casuals — often interpreted as an indicator of ‘precarious’ employment — grew from 13 per cent in 1984 to 22 per cent in 1999. The staff paper finds that the ABS measure of casual employees in August 1998 was overstated by 34 per cent, because it included people who were not genuine employees with a casual employment contract, and at least one-third of all employees with a casual employment contract did not work in a way that was casual (occasional, irregular or short term).non-traditional employment - casual employment - workers - labour - statistics - ABS

Sustainability in Construction: Using Lean Management Principles to Reduce Waste

The construction industry is facing many challenges. There are growing consumer demands for sustainable building. The construction industry generates a significant portion of the waste going into landfills. The construction industry has failed to keep pace with productivity in the manufacturing industry. Through adoption of Lean management principles, the construction industry can become more sustainable while increasing productivity. The literature was evaluated for three concepts: Lean management principles interaction with sustainability, the current state of sustainability in the construction industry, and the current state of Lean management principles in the construction industry. Lean management philosophies interactions with sustainability has been heavily studied in the manufacturing industry, but rarely so in the construction industry. The construction industry has been slow to adopt Lean philosophies, as construction presents unique challenges not present in manufacturing. There are emerging technologies in construction that enhance sustainability and Lean philosophies. Through analysis of the few case studies performed on Lean construction, an early model of Lean impacts has been proposed

Linking Theory To Practice: Experiential Learning In An Employee Wellness Practicum

Engaging students in a process that connects real world experience with their course of study is well documented in the literature as a pedagogy linked with experiential learning. This paper is a case study of an experiential learning (EL) process in a practicum course in Employee Wellness. This case study describes how this unique program follows an EL model where students work together to manage an on-campus wellness programs for employees at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point

The association of gait speed and self-reported difficulty walking with social isolation: A nationally-representative study.

BACKGROUND: Mobility assessments are commonly used among older adults as risk stratification for falls, preoperative function, frailty, and mortality. We determined if gait speed and self-reported difficulty walking are similarly associated with social isolation and loneliness, which are key markers of social well-being and linked to health outcomes. METHODS: We used 2015-2016 data from the National Social life Health and Aging Project (NSHAP), an in-person nationally-representative survey of 2640 community-dwelling adults ≥65 years old. We measured gait speed (timed 3-m walk: unable to walk, ≥5.7 s, and <5.7 s), and self-reported difficulty walking one block or across the room (unable, much, some, or no difficulty). Social measures included loneliness (3-item UCLA scale), social isolation (12-item scale), and individual social activities (frequency socializing, religious participation, community participation, and volunteering). We used logistic regression to determine the adjusted probability of each social measure by gait speed and difficulty walking, adjusting for sociodemographic and health characteristics, and tested for interaction terms with age. RESULTS: Participants were on average 75 years old (SD = 7.1), 54% female, 9% Black/African American, and 6% Hispanic. Difficulty walking one block was associated with (p < 0.05): social isolation (much difficulty: 26% vs no difficulty: 18%), low socializing (33% vs 19%), low volunteering (67% vs 53%), low community participation (54% vs 43%), low religious participation (51% vs 46%), and loneliness (25% vs 14%). Difficulty walking across the room was similarly strongly associated with social isolation and individual activities. The association between self-reported difficulty walking and social isolation was stronger at older ages (p-value of interaction <0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Self-reported mobility difficulty is a widely used clinical assessment that is strongly associated with loneliness and social isolation, particularly at older ages. Among persons with limited mobility, clinicians should consider a careful social history to identify social needs and interventions addressing mobility to enhance social connections

Normal Mode Spectra of Idealized Baroclinic Waves

© Copyright 2020 American Meteorological Society (AMS). For permission to reuse any portion of this work, please contact [email protected]. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S. Code §?107) or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC § 108) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a website or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. All AMS journals and monograph publications are registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (https://www.copyright.com). Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy statement, available on the AMS website (https://www.ametsoc.org/PUBSCopyrightPolicy).Normal modes are used to investigate the contributions of geostrophic vortices and inertia–gravity waves to the energy spectrum of an idealized baroclinic wave simulation. The geostrophic and ageostrophic modal spectra (GE and AE, respectively) are compared to the rotational and divergent kinetic energy (RKE and DKE, respectively), which are often employed as proxies for vortex and wave energy. In our idealized f-plane framework, the horizontal modes are Fourier, and the vertical modes are found by solving an appropriate eigenvalue problem. For low vertical mode number n, both the GE and AE spectra are steep; however, for higher n, while both spectra are shallow, the AE is shallower than the GE and the spectra cross. The AE spectra are peaked at the Rossby deformation wavenumber kR n , which increases with n. Analysis of the horizontal mode equations suggests that, for large wavenumbers k kR n , the GE is approximated by the RKE, while the AE is approximated by the sum of the DKE and potential energy. These approximations are supported by the simulations. The vertically averaged RKE and DKE spectra are compared to the sum of the GE and AE spectra over all vertical modes; the spectral slopes of the GE and AE are close to those of the RKE and DKE, supporting the use of the Helmholtz decomposition to estimate vortices and waves in the midlatitudes. However, the AE is consistently larger than the DKE because of the contribution from the potential energy. Care must be taken when diagnosing the mesoscale transition from the intersection of the vortex and wave spectra; GE and AE will intersect at a different scale than RKE and DKE, despite their similar slopes.Funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Grant RGPIN-386456-2015

The role of ion-molecule reactions in the growth of heavy ions in Titan's ionosphere

This is the published version. Copyright 2014 American Geophysical UnionThe Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) and Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) have observed Titan's ionospheric composition and structure over several targeted flybys. In this work we study the altitude profiles of the heavy ion population observed by the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer-Ion Beam Spectrometer (CAPS-IBS) during the nightside T57 flyby. We produce altitude profiles of heavy ions from the C6–C13 group (Ci indicates the number, i, of heavy atoms in the molecule) using a CAPS-IBS/INMS cross calibration. These altitude profiles reveal structure that indicates a region of initial formation and growth at altitudes below 1200 km followed by a stagnation and dropoff at the lowest altitudes (1050 km). We suggest that an ion-molecule reaction pathway could be responsible for the production of the heavy ions, namely reactions that utilize abundant building blocks such as C2H2 and C2H4, which have been shown to be energetically favorable and that have already been identified as ion growth patterns for the lighter ions detected by the INMS. We contrast this growth scenario with alternative growth scenarios determining the implications for the densities of the source heavy neutrals in each scenario. We show that the high-mass ion density profiles are consistent with ion-molecule reactions as the primary mechanism for large ion growth. We derive a production rate for benzene from electron recombination of C6H7+ of 2.4 × 10−16 g cm−2 s−1 and a total production rate for large molecules of 7.1 × 10−16 g cm−2 s−1