Reframing the work of ‘undervalued’ security officers in quarantine hotels

The perception of poor practice by security officers employed on COVID-19 hotel quarantine duties in Victoria needs to be reframed, with the workers seen as victims of circumstance and not agents of poor performance, a Federation University researcher says.

A paper on Professor Erica Smith's research was recently published in the academic journal Labour and Industry and followed several years of research into the security industry as part of a project funded by the Australian Research Council.

During 2020 and 2021, she used that research to investigate the role of security officers in hotel quarantine. She says the role of officers is undervalued and not properly regarded, and the public's perception of what happened during the hotel quarantine was unfair – many of the workers were undertrained, came from a disadvantaged background and were putting their lives and the lives of their families at risk.

"Security work is difficult and can be dangerous. The officers are usually employed on a casual basis and are often recent migrants. Most people knew that the industry was like that, yet the work was contracted out to private security companies," Professor Smith said.

"My paper details the fact that those decisions were made very quickly – and it was ultimately bad for the workers, and it compounded the low esteem in which the occupation was held. We know that these officers, mainly men, were often working between two and three hotels – this was substantiated by the COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry."

Professor Smith says the inquiry identified aspects of the industry that contributed to some of the failings of the hotel quarantine program. There were many instances of contracting, subcontracting, and subcontracting below the subcontractors.

"When you look at the international literature around the pandemic, there was a lot of hasty contracting to private companies in different spheres of government in many countries. Yet people in Australia focused on the fact that the security industry had a bad reputation, and all those negative perceptions were transferred to the security officers," Professor Smith said.

She cites media reports and politicians' statements in her paper as illustrations.

"The staff were shouldering the blame for something which wasn't their fault – they were just trying to do their job, often several jobs working in different places. They actually did a very good job considering the circumstances and the fact they had no support – officers in hotels were promised support, but there wasn't any. Officers were basically told to ring 000 like everyone else if an issue arose."

Professor Smith said when she started researching the use of private security during the pandemic, it became clear that private security is increasingly used globally to substitute for the deployment of police or military.

"One might imagine that in future events, whether it's a pandemic or a major demonstration, for example, it's very likely that security officers will be there doing the work that you'd normally expect to see police or perhaps the army doing." Professor Erica Smith

"Because of the nature of the industry and the nature of the workers, there are alarm bells ringing for the future."

Professor Smith says there are positive aspects from the experience, and lessons can be used to inform the future development of training for the industry. Her earlier research identified that qualifications had shortcomings when dealing with some situations, including emergencies and evacuations. This became evident during the hotel quarantine period.

The experience may also cause governments to consider more carefully the implications of outsourcing public safety work, including the need for backup for the workers.

"The government needs to work with security companies to ensure that in future emergencies and when security companies are involved, there are very clear regulations enforced, particularly around subcontracting. There were rules in place – but these were flouted," she said.

"And it would be ideal if the security industry was able to create more full-time jobs because there are full-time jobs in the security industry, and one thing that's often said about security work is that the wages are low. There's a 'cowboy' image related to the employment conditions and the prevalence of sub-contracting rather than the actual activities involved. This is well documented in the literature on the industry."

Professor Smith says reframing what happened during hotel quarantine would be positive for the industry and workers.

"It's in the past, but who's to say it won't reoccur? Many people will still have in their minds that security workers are useless, saying things like 'remember what happened in the pandemic'? But that could all be reframed as 'they put their lives at risk like the nurses did'."

"People have an image that security work is about people standing outside nightclubs and throwing people out. Many people usually only encounter security officers when there's a problem because they're being stopped from doing something or getting into trouble for doing something. That's a small part of it, but most security work isn't like that, and most security workers are not like that."