Undergraduate Student Employment and its Effect on Graduates’ Attitudes toward Work, Employment and Trade Unions

Abstract

In the labour market for young Australians, two connected trends have occurred simultaneously. The proportion of young people completing post-secondary qualifications, including graduating from university, has increased. The student labour market, comprising mostly low-skill, casual jobs in the service sector, has expanded. Having been given the label ‘Generation Y’, the cohort of young people currently leaving full-time education for full-time employment have been stereotyped by press and popular literature as less committed to work and employment at the same time as possessing unrealistically high expectations of work, as individualistic and uninterested in trade unions. The thesis considers whether there is a connection between the two trends by examining the research question, how does student employment affect university graduates’ attitudes toward work, employment and trade unions. Studies of student employment have demonstrated a relationship between the intensity, duration, and quality of student employment and students’ work values, attitudes toward the distribution of economic rewards, and attitudes toward trade unions. The thesis addresses three gaps in the current literature. First, the thesis investigates university student employment. Second, the thesis uses Australian subjects. Third, the thesis adopts a longitudinal research design, assessing the impact of student employment after the transition to graduate employment. The thesis uses a mixed methods approach. A survey was conducted of 1200 undergraduates approaching the end of their studies. Eighteen months later, a follow-up survey retained 541 for a panel study. In addition, twelve biographical case studies provided qualitative data to supplement the survey results. The results showed that student employment was associated with graduate employment outcomes, graduates’ expectations of job quality and job regulation, graduate work beliefs, and graduate attitudes toward trade unions but not graduates’ work centrality. The intensity of student employment has a small, positive effect on the importance graduates place on their jobs. The incidence and quality of student employment increased students’ expectations of graduate job quality. The incidence, relevance, and type of agreement of student employment affected students’ expectations of graduate job regulation. The intensity of student employment had a negative effect on graduates’ work beliefs. The quality of student employment had a positive effect on graduates’ work beliefs. The duration of student employment decreased graduates’ trust in management. Positive experiences of union membership during student employment and working under a union agreement during student employment significantly increased graduates’ level of support for trade unions. In addition, the intensity and quality of student employment indirectly influenced graduates’ attitudes toward trade unions as graduates’ work beliefs were very highly negatively related to graduates’ attitudes toward trade unions. Student employment also provided a pathway to graduate employment for some respondents, indirectly affecting graduates’ attitudes. The impact of student employment depended in large part on the nature of the destination labour market. Within the sample, occupational, company, and peripheral labour markets were identified. Respondents used student employment to supplement institutional pathways to graduate employment or create their own individualised pathway. Structuration theory explains how student employment was a space to exercise agency, albeit bounded by structural barriers, such as the area of study, the economic and social policy context of the transition, the timing of other life-course transitions, and respondents’ relationships with parents and partners. This was significant because the quality and status of graduate employment had a direct influence on graduates’ attitudes toward work, employment and trade unions. The concept of biographical meaning, drawn from life-course analysis, is used to show that graduates’ attitudes toward work, employment and trade unions are affected by the quality and intensity of student employment and the relationship between student employment and graduate employment. The quality of student employment directly increases graduates’ expectations of job quality and their work beliefs and negatively affects their attitudes toward trade unions, but has no effect on graduates’ work centrality or job involvement. The relationship is strengthened where student employment has led to graduate employment.