letter from new south wales/australia
text in german
(20.03.01) I am a call centre worker from a country town in New South Wales, Australia. My fellow workers and I are casual contract workers for a major telecommunications company. We have no job security, but there's not many alternatives in a country town these days. We compete for shifts with workers in other centres around Australia causing pay and conditions to be eroded by work-place bargaining and individual contracts. It is especially galling as we work alongside permanent workers employed some years ago when the company was still completely government owned. They have sick pay, leave and big payouts when they take redundancy (which of course they are being heavily encouraged to do by the company). Not that they are resented at all, far from it. Its just that the contrast of their conditions against ours serves as a constant reminder of how little management cares about us. There are many different pay rates, the most recently arrived on the smallest. We had to sign a form stating that we would not disclose our pay rates to other workers! Currently the general feeling is of complete powerlessness to do anything about it although we do have a union.
I have read your pages with interest and passed your URL on to workmates.