MPs interfere with school activities

Students at several Riverina high schools benefited from the Your Rights at Work bus (inset) visit.

By Nicole Calnan

The Your Rights at Work bus tour to the Riverina caused a great deal of controversy recently.

August 9 and 10 saw the Unions NSW big orange Your Rights at Work bus roll into the Riverina, with visits planned to schools in both Albury and Wagga Wagga. Similar school visits were conducted earlier in the year on the Mid North Coast and in Queanbeyan. However, the proposed visits in the Riverina sparked controversy when local Liberal state MP Greg Aplin was made aware of the impending visits.

After some agitation in the local media, local Department of Education and Training officials were asked to provide a briefing to Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt about the purpose and content of the sessions for students at the high schools.

With the visits to these high schools to proceed, it got the attention of Federal Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews, who along with Farrer MP Sussan Ley issued a press release in which they "expressed serious concern about Unions NSW taking its untruthful campaign against the new workplace laws" into schools.

Over the two day visit, local talk back radio lines ran hot with people wanting to have their say. Opinions ranged from those who thought that both sides of the story deserved to be presented in schools through to a recent school leaver who wishes she had been informed of the new industrial relations laws before they were introduced.

However 'controversial' the visits were supposed to be, the students who attended the sessions with parental permission responded very positively to the information that was presented to them and they actively engaged in discussions with the Unions NSW staff about the issues raised.

With the support of the Department of Education and Training, a greater number of young workers in the Riverina were given the opportunity to receive information concerning their rights at work. It was just a shame those local MPs sought to interfere and politicise the issue for their own political gain and in doing so, attempted to deny students and their parents the opportunity to decide if this was appropriate for them.

Nicole Calnan is a Country Organiser.

The student sessions

• Introduction of the speakers and the unions they work for. (Students were asked if they knew what a union was.)
• Where do students work?
• Why do students work?
• What expectations are placed on them at work?
• What do students expect when they are at work?
• An explanation of the difference between "unfair" and "unlawful" dismissal.
• Overview of collective agreements that most students were covered by (with 20 allowable matters).
• New system to move to individual contracts or Australian Workplace Agreements that have five allowable matters.
• What may happen as a result of these changes? (Students responded "no longer able to play sport", "not able to pay for mobile phone", "can't help mum or dad out with household bills".)
• Individual versus collective negotiations role play.

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Last Modified: 24 Aug 2006