…isn’t every apprentice’s dream:
Seventeen-year-old Mark McGrath didn’t know what he was signing - only that if he didn’t sign it he would lose his apprenticeship.
Next thing he knew his host employer refused him days off and paid his overtime in bourbon.
Mark later realised he’d signed away two hours of overtime a day and would lose a regular rostered day off thanks to an individual contract he said was forced upon him by the residential construction industry’s peak employer group.
The contract from the Housing Industry Association removed some of his rights but the builder who was his host employer went even further.
“If I worked back late my host, instead of paying me overtime, would buy me a four-pack of bourbon. He told me not to put [the overtime] down,” Mark said.
“If it was an RDO [rostered day off] he wanted me to work.”
Now working for another builder, Mark is warning other apprentices that individual contracts can be slippery.
He said in a statutory declaration he was told he had to sign the “paperwork” or he would lose his apprenticeship.
“I was not given the opportunity or the time to read it,” he said.
“I was not given the opportunity or the time to read it”
A similar tune now sung by those who voted THAT way — “John Howard didn’t give me the opportunity to understand what a vote for him meant”. Double shock for those who thought their vote was going to make Peter Costello the new tenant of Kiribilli House.
Next thing, the voters are going to be questioning their long-held belief that ‘casualisation’ was going to be expansion of ‘Casual Friday’.
*Shhh. We can’t hit them with too many blows in one go*
Had a job interview today, crim, so am typing wearing a suit and tie (purple tie and mauve shirt!) - all of which is most unwonted for me these days - so bring on casual Friday!
You and purple, a match made in Prince and the revolution inspired hell…
As for this chap, I don’t see his complaint, clearly he had the choice to take up an attractive position filling out dole forms…
No RDO is worth giving up for any RTD.
Good luck on the interview Mark. Also, are you negotiating a bourbon clause in your contract?
Not bourbon surely - some sort of obscure bolshie cocktail, I’ll wager.
Not comin’ up the country to join us in the mines, Mark?
I wonder what the employer’s side of the story was.
Well, he must have known the boy was 17, and that it was illegal to supply him with alcohol.
Yeah, that was my first thought. Are the various Governments still giving employers free moolah for taking on apprentices? I’m sure they’d love to know where that’s going.
a suit and tie (purple tie and mauve shirt!)
*cues a certain ZZ-Top hit*
Good luck with the application, Mark!
I never got bourbon for my unpaid overtime when I was seventeen. Tsk. All I got was a directive to “clock off before you go and unload the truck”.
<RWDB>…Which just shows how good a deal workers get in John Howard’s workers paradise, now that employers have the freedom to provide jobs…</RWDB>
I wouldn’t rush to judgement. Years ago I worked the phones on an industrial award information hotline (Dept of Industrial Relations). When I and a couple of others started, the old hands said to us, ‘You think it’s all about heartless employers ripping off their employee victims, don’t you?’ We all nodded. They said, ‘You’re going to find out it’s the other way around’. After about a year, I scored it around 50-50.
Still treasure the memory of a guy ringing up with a very convincing pitch about how he’d innocently turned up for work, got unfairly roared out by the boss for no reason, and been heartlessly and summarily sacked. He can’t do that, can he? Turned out, when I’d asked a few questions, that he’d been absent for a week from a key position without telling his employer about it, showed up without explanation or apology, and when the boss expressed his vehement disapproval, just decked him. I told him the employer was well within his award rights in sacking him (which he was) and he should be grateful he wasn’t charged with assault.
All I’m saying is that all we’ve got here is the kid’s story of what happened. Absent an account from the other side, we can’t know if it’s true.
a suit and tie (purple tie and mauve shirt!)
I’m fuckin speechless.
Dear Saint Paul J K.
Please forgive him. He knows not what he does.
see FXH, you can look bad in a suit.
FXH looks fine in a suit. His ties however….
So Mark did they throw you violet bouquets?
Everyone has missed 5 key words “Now working for another builder…”. If you offer poor conditions, you risk losing your staff.
Good point Andrew but the employer needs to be named and shamed otherwise the market system will not work ( that’s for you Jason) properly.
Of course not everyone will be able to find another employer offering a similar job.
People, people! Why is everyone so surprised about the colour of shirt and tie. Look at your screen and what do you see? Oh yes! Mark is a purple fetishist. It’s OK, just take two Vicodin everyday and normal colours will resume.
Andrew does have a good point, that this kid did leave his employer, and got another job.
And if this wasn’t in a labour market with an excess demand for labour? This kid would just have to take the bourbon and deal with it, or get sacked.
I am going to protest.
The suit was black with a white pinstripe, I hasten to reassure people!
Tony, couldn’t bring myself to leave beautiful Brisvegas but I might give you a call in a few weeks when the thesis is out of my hair about whether anything’s happening here in town along the same lines.
The work is 2 and possibly 3 day’s first year teaching in the Business Faculty next semester - and I’m also applying for a full time continuing position at Griffith - so I’ll have to disappear now and write the said application.
The suit was black with a white pinstripe,..
*sigh*
I guess we should ask if there were black & white, patent leather wingtips on each foot and a tommy gun in hands. That sort of attire gets the interviewers attention…otherwise its concrete thongs and into the Brissie River you go.
Paging Oswald Boateng
“Next thing, the voters are going to be questioning their long-held belief that casualisation was going to be expansion of Casual Friday.”
Like your thinking, crim! Sort of matches mine when in a black mood, I hope they chop down every last tree in Tassie. They should get what they voted for.
And bring back conscription - Iraq needs more troops and we ain’t got enough to do the job properly.
I’d prefer myself to earn the wages, then spend them all on Cocktails (TM).
Naomi, that’s an important point - I’ll take that up with some state government contacts!
naomi - I’d be checking that such besuited travesties are outlawed and the penalties enshrined in legislation. First offence, read Don Watsons book on PJK. Second offence read it again. Third offence, forced removal to Queensland.