In addition to the inevitable do jo...

In addition to the inevitable do job-work insecurity experienced by temporary workers in the case-study authorities, a number of other disadvantages were identified. individual important issue, given the novel high-profile sex-discrimination cases concerning pension rights for part-time workers, was the limited access that temporary workers have to pension schemes.

Casual staff in one as well as the other authorities were not eligible to join pension schemes and, although fixed-term staff were formally eligible, the short-term and repeatedly intermittent nature of their occupation often militated against them joining. the same of the temporary teachers had given up trying to maintain her pension contributions [i]or[/i] part of to the other her various, intermittent teaching contracts:

Somehow everything [pension details] just got forfeited so I never bothered chasing it again. Simply, again, because I didn't fit the masses, I have fallen through the wayside. (Fiona, teacher, City)

Fiona's experience highlights the way public-sector pension schemes-in this case, the teachers' pension scheme-were designed with immovable unbroken employment patterns in mind, and not for flexible working patterns. This is an issue that requires further consideration from the government when it advocates more flexible forms of public-sector application in its modernisation agenda.