This discussion paper by a group of scholars across the fields of health, economics and labour relations argues that COVID-19 is an unprecedented humanitarian crisis from which there can be no return to the ‘old normal’. The pandemic’s disastrous worldwide health impacts have been exacerbated by, and have compounded, the unsustainability of economic globalisation based on the neoliberal dismantling of state capabilities in favour of markets. Flow-on economic impacts have simultaneously created major supply and demand disruptions, and highlighted the growing within-country inequalities and precarity generated by neoliberal regimes of labour market regulation. Taking an Australian and international perspective, we examine these economic and labour market impacts, paying particular attention to differential impacts on First Nations people, developing countries, women, immigrants and young people. Evaluating policy responses in a political climate of national and international leadership very different from those in which major twentieth century crises were addressed, we argue the need for a national and international conversation to develop a new pathway out of crisis. JEL Codes: E18, HO, I1, J64, J88

Australian universities now have a headcount casualisation rate near the national workforce average. Reasons for, and impacts of, this development are explored, and an argument is made for the role of industrial regulation in reconciling requirements for flexibility, security and equity in university employment. Responses to a large survey of casual academic and general staff suggest that this employment mode is a minority preference. Discrete groups of casual university staff, including those seeking university careers, those with other secure income sources, and students in transit to other careers, experience different forms and levels of insecurity and inequity. Appropriately targeted regulatory responses thus include criteria-based caps, a general staff conversion mechanism, a work value review, access to increments and service entitlements, and workplace representation rights.

Service skill definitions have been over-extended, by equating compliance with skill, and underdeveloped, by not recognising service jobs’ invisible social and organisational aspects. Existing approaches to determining service skill levels draw on occupational qualifications and capacity for labour market closure, on knowledge worker/ knowledgeable emotion worker dichotomies, and on the conceptual conflation of labour process deskilling, unskilled jobs and unskilled workers. The theoretical and empirical basis for a new framework identifying hitherto under-specified ‘work process skills’ is outlined. This framework allows recognition of the integrated use of awareness-shaping, relationship-shaping and coordination skills, at different levels of experience-based complexity, derived from reflexive learning and collective problem-solving in the workplace. Political struggles over the use of combinations and levels of these ‘skills of experience’ may result either in jobs designed to reduce autonomy, or in improved skill recognition and development, enhancing equity and career paths.

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Debates over whether customer service work is deskilled or part of the knowledge economy tend to focus on single issues such as control, emotional labour or information management. Call centre work, however, falls within a spectrum of service jobs requiring simultaneous and multifaceted work with people, information and technology, This activity, which we call 'articulation work', is often performed within tight timeframes and requires workers, first, to integrate their own tasks into an ongoing 'line' of work, and second, to collaborate in maintaining the overall work-flow. The requisite skills, of awareness, interaction management and coordination, tend to be poorly specified in competency standards that subdivide work into discrete tasks. We compare examples of call centre competency standards with case study accounts of the use of articulation work skills, arguing the need for a taxonomy allowing the recognition of different levels of these skills across the service sector.