Bazza, my heart bleeds....
I work 6 or 7 days a week part time up to 6 hours/day. Flat rate $15 per hour regardless of Saturday/sunday/Public Holiday whatever. We work everyday of the year except Christmas Day. We work straight through without any breaks at all. No sick pay, holiday pay or anything else.
But I do it because its only 5 minutes away, it involves doing something I enjoy and I am allowed to take a fewdays off 4 times a year to go to Sydney for Uni residential schools (I study external, part-time). If my boss had had to employ me under the award system (at the time) it wouldn't have happened so I just try to be happy with my lot and get on with it. For $53/hour I think you should remember that you are damn lucky to be in a position to earn that sort of money. I do sympathise with the problems involved with procuring a bank loan - that sucks.
bazza also forgets to mention that while on site he is well fed & accommodated.
He's probably not working 28 days straight... its unlawful. The 14th day should be rostered off.
Well that sounds more like a particular workplace culture than union members per se.. Still doesn't suggest a sound basis for forming judgments about workchoices, but there you have it.
Hasher,
Most city workers spend longer travelling than Bazza spends flying to Perth. My travel time is:
10 minute walk to bus stop
30 minutes on the bus (60 minutes if the traffic is bad)
5 minutes walk to my workplace at the other end
= 45 minutes x twice a day = 90 minutes travel time a day
90 minutes x 5 days a week = 7½ hours a week minimum (and I live pretty close to the city)
yehyeh
#37 - it will be more like $118,000/year if you consider only getting paid while working, and being casual he will have spells of unemployment between jobs
That's the outback nomadic work culture though - as A.B. Paterson put it over 100 years ago "work a while, and make a pile, and have a spree in town"
Bazza's situation doesn't seem that different from when I was doing it in the 1970s and everything was unionised.
We get it whenever we take annual leave, be it a day or a week or a month. They just add 17.5% tax free on top of your total, which is a great bonus for holidays.
#26, I work at my local airport(when at home and not O/S for work), a 20 minute drive from my front door, no traffic. Its about as good a job as I could possibly ask for, and gives my family the opportunity to grow up and live their lives in a quiet country town, 400 metres from the beach. Wouldnt want it any other way. With my 10 hour days, 4 days a week, it gives mum and dad time out whilst the kids are at school, and also gives me the opportunity to drop them off and pick them up once a week, something many dads cant do due to work hours. Theres ample opportunity to go contracting and earn $40-$50 per hour, especially in Sydney or Melbourne, but quite frankly, with the pay and conditions my company provides, id be mad to chase extra dollars.
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