Employers seem to be following two paths - casualise, deunionise, segregate workers, treating them as expendable.

Another senior backbencher, Chris Mullin, said there was an "underlying fear" among postal workers that the long-term objective of management was to "privatise and casualise" the industry.

He said the government was in a "headlong rush" to casualise the service and cut jobs regardless of whether or not the posts would need to be refilled, wasting tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money.

The public sector union, the CPSU, in a bulletin to its Human Services membership, said the department's management was trying to quietly casualise some of its workforce while undermining the job security of all 36,000 employees.

Qantas Executive General Manager Engineering David Cox said this week there would be no weakening of the airline's negotiating position, said to include plans to reclassify some engineer positions and casualise parts of its workforce. '

PSA general secretary Anne Gardiner says the Government Sector Employment Bill, which was rushed into parliament late last month without consultation, will casualise employment and remove important protections, merit-based recruitment processes and the right to promotional appeals.

The Tube network has never been under such pressure and RMT is receiving regular reports now of dangerous overcrowding, a problem that is deepened by any attempt to casualise, cut and undermine safety-critical jobs across the combine.'