When Claire* finished university last year, she sought some Christmas holiday work. Most available jobs were casual and attracted many applicants. Claire ended up underpaid and having to fight for the wage she was entitled to. This is her story.
I landed a job in a Christmas tree warehouse with several other students doing general warehouse duties, decorating and delivery driving. At $14 an hour it didn't pay as well as other jobs I'd had, but the variety of work was good and there was the promise of more money when I took on more responsibilities.
The business was run on a day-to-day basis and I wasn't told when I would be working next until the end of each day. There was no roster and you had to get in quick or you'd miss out on a shift.
The warehouse was dodgy. There was no light in the toilets; we had a pitch-black cubicle with wires hanging from where a light bulb once was.
One fire reel was lying unconnected on the floor. There were no extinguishers and the boss smoked indoors, near flammable Christmas trees. Electrical cords snaked their way across the floor.
The boss's dog had free reign. It would ride in the front seat of the van with the workers during jobs to city offices, and was left with us to look after when the boss went back to the warehouse for more materials.
We worked without training with 240-volt Christmas lights — safer lights cost more. No one was taught to lift correctly and our work tables were made out of boards held up by stacks of boxes.
The shop used to be a family business. My boss hadn't employed anyone before and didn't know anything about the award. For my first delivery I got paid more, but not after the next few, despite asking for more.
I rang the National Union of Workers and found out that the pay rate for my job was $1.85 per hour more than I was getting.
The next Monday, my boss telephoned me 45 minutes before I was due to start to tell me not to come in until Thursday. During the argument that followed he sacked me. I then threatened legal action for underpaying us.
The boss got scared and denied he had "sacked" me, saying that since I was employed as a casual he simply wasn't offering me any more work.
A few days later I received my back pay, and my former boss told me he had back paid everyone and was now paying the award rate.
A new start
I then took a job washing cars at a car dealership — there weren't many jobs around so close to Christmas. We were paid $12.45 per hour — below not only the award but also the minimum wage!
I talked to a member of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, who signed me up and rang an organiser. We worked out that the car washers were being underpaid by $103 per week.
When I confronted the boss and his manager, the manager used every trick in the book to get out of paying the award rate.
He said that the award covered mechanics only. When I explained it also covered detailers, he told me that I wasn't a detailer, all I did was "rub a rag over a car".
He offered to pay for my bus tickets to work. I refused his paltry offer and said I had a right to be paid the award. "But the other guys are happy", he said. "We don't dock them if they turn up a bit late." And, "If we paid you the award rate we'd have to make you clock on and off each day on a time sheet. You wouldn't want to do that would you?"
I was told I couldn't call the union because it wasn't a unionised workplace. A union presence was my boss's worst fear and he used the ultimate threat — not offering me any more work — to ensure it didn't happen.
I probably should have backed off at this stage, but I couldn't. "So you're sacking me for asking to be paid the award rate?" I got the by now familiar argument about not being sacked because I was a casual employee, but this time I simply replied, "We'll see what the union has to say about that too".
The union organiser came in the next day and spoke to me about what we could do. The following day, my boss told me that everyone would be paid the detailers' award rate, including the casual loading, and we would be back paid.
Until then, the boss had been having a picnic. Most of my co-workers were backpackers or migrants with little English. No one knew what pay and conditions they should be getting and although some had previously asked for more, they didn't want to risk their jobs.
Many young people have to take these shitty, un-unionised, casual jobs, where it is hard to confront the boss about our rights. But when employers are getting away with paying wages lower than the award or even minimum standards (and that's without even bothering with individual contracts), we have to take them on.
My experiences over Christmas as a casual worker have taught me the importance of joining the union and standing up for your rights. Others in the past fought so hard to win us decent pay and conditions; we can and must stop them from being whittled away.
[*The author's real name has not been used.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 1, 2006.
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