Millions trapped in insecure work

Casual workers should be given annual leave while bosses should be banned from keeping workers in unstable work long-term, an ACTU report recommends.

Former deputy prime minister Brian Howe is launching his report into insecure work in Sydney on Wednesday, which estimates that 40 per cent of Australians are trapped in unstable jobs.

It recommends that casual work only be allowed in situations where work is irregular or short-term, and that employers be banned from creating temporary jobs where there are "reasonable grounds" to expect the work will continue.

Casual workers should also be given access to annual leave while labour hire firms should be part of a licensing system and be treated as employers, the report says.

National employment standards also need to be strengthened to protect the most vulnerable workers.

In the report, Mr Howe said many casual workers often juggled multiple jobs, had low or outdated skills and had trouble saving.

"For them, flexibility is not knowing when and where they will work, facing the risk of being laid off with no warning, and being required to fit family responsibilities around unpredictable periods of work," he said.

"Although 40 per cent of Australians are in insecure work, this is a development that has avoided proper examination and scrutiny for too long."

Launching the report at the Sydney Convention Centre, Mr Howe said casual workers on the "periphery" of the labour force wanted more hours, contrary to the claims of the business lobby.

"People in this situation have no identity," he said.

"Work is very much part of your identity. But for people who work casually, very often they could be working alongside someone who is a permanent worker, who's very much part of the furniture but for that insecure, part-time casual worker, very often there's no sense they're part of the firm in a serious way."

He urged the ACTU to lead the fight for casual workers' rights under a system where business risk was shifting from employers to employees.

"The growing crisis in insecure work is crying out for action that will translate our findings for real action for the people affected," he said, adding state governments who used labour hire firms to find casual workers were part of the problem.

Mr Howe, a former social security minister in the Hawke government, said punishing the unemployed by treating them as "pariahs" had been counterproductive for a long time.

"No sophisticated country should do that," he said to applause.

Australian Workers' Union national secretary Paul Howes said the union movement would struggle to attract more than 20 per cent of the workforce unless conditions for casual employees improved.

"I firmly believe that there is no way of breaking that 20 per cent mark if precarious employment continues to grow at the level it grows," he said moving a resolution to make tackling insecure work a core function of the ACTU.