5. Employment Security

This chapter presents a case study of a coastal town in the Australian state of Queensland. Renamed ‘Utopia’ for the purposes of the study, the town provides the setting to explore the topic of employment security. Residents of Utopia shared their views on what it meant to have secure employment and how their lives were impacted by its absence. At the time of the interviews the town was expecting a largescale transnational company to build an alumina refinery that had the potential to provide work for local people. Within this context, the chapter considers the notion of the mobile worker, the role of unions and the views of company representatives. The study showed that those living in Utopia were often faced with difficulty in obtaining employment security. The circumstances relating to employment are shown to contribute to the concept of the new security.