The Gatekeeper

I've just been to work this morning, marking presentations at uni. It is the end of semester and that time of mixed relief and dread and not having work for the next four weeks. Casual work sucks. Oh sure it allows for flexibility of hours but flexibility for who? Does it benefit the university of the worker?

I had to drive in to uni today for 1 hour, tomorrow it will be for 3 hours and on Monday I drove for 1 hour to attend a 2 hour meeting and drove home again. On each of those days the one hour turns into a half a day, rendering the rest of the day impractical for other activities. You are not paid for this time, just the face to face. So for my one and a half days of time - 12 hours, I will only be paid for 6 of these.

There is a new work agreement being put to the vote today for all staff at the uni. Casuals can vote for this. The union has worked to try and improve conditions for staff and particularly casuals. I have voted in favour of the new agreement as it will supposedly give more access to career development instead of the usual pick and mix that occurs semester by semester. What I mean by that is you never know where the work is going to be, so you follow accept what you can.

Part of this agreement is that the university is no longer to casualise much of its workforce but needs to provide career development for longer term casuals and more permanent jobs. This sounds fantastic and I wholeheartedly support this. However I received an email from one of my unit coordinators forwarding an advice from her head of school advising that she will no longer be able to employ a casual for more than 7 hours face to face per week, as the school cannot afford to employ the casuals on a longer standing contract. In effect this will reduce work available to me and that means job opportunities. More casuals will be employed but each one will be limited in how much they can work. If they work more than this they will need to be placed on a longer term, more stable contract.The agreement is being interpreted in such a way as to still disenfranchise casual academic staff and keep an enormous divide between permanents and casuals especially regarding conditions, privileges and opportunities. This is despite casuals being responsible for a major proportion of the teaching, administration and marking of students.

Permanent staff members enjoy security, sick days, holidays, access to promotions, staff development and career planning. casuals are being kept out in the cold.

Today I asked a coordinator if he had any casual work as it is in an area in which I specialize. Although I was interviewed for a coordinators position in his department earlier in the year, he will not allow me in for casual work. There is work available but I am not being offered this work. The system still operates through word of mouth, favoritism, not through merit

No More Travelling......for a while anyway

Jan 1987

I was never going to have children young. I wanted to travel the world. I started to but something happened. By 18 I had traveled to New Caledonia and Fiji with my parents and had a taste for the exotic. At the end of school I really had no idea what I wanted to do except travel, so I enrolled in a travel course but found it so mind numbingly boring. I thought I might be able to get a travel job in one of the banks because in the 80's a few of the banks had their own travel sections. Instead, I ended up working as a bank teller in the heart of the city of Sydney.

I saved my money and with a group of friends did the real bogan thing and went to Bali. I didn't care. I was just happy to finally be traveling. I loved it. Sure there was the late night drinking and drinking funny drinks made of mushrooms that made you see amazing things but this is not what I was really wanting from traveling. What I enjoyed was the temples, the colours, the moss growing on the ancient stairs leading up to the rice fields. It was the unexpected, the meeting of a family making jewellery and buying a simple plastic beaded necklace from them. It was the story behind the journey that was interesting.

My joyful trip was shortlived as a liason that I had with an older French businessman was the catalyst for a bitter argument with my best friend. I couldn't work out why she was so upset with me for hooking up with him. About 6 months later I was to find out that she had been abused as a young child by her grandfather . She ended up "coming out" with this after we came back and told all her family and friends. I was somehow still to blame and was not in favour.  I came back home and resumed my job with the bank and thought I would start to save and plan for my next adventure but it never happened.

Soon after I met and fell in love with my soon to be husband. He was also working at the bank. He was a muso, a womanizer and a great lair. I was young in love and so naive. He moved in with me at my shared house and everyone else moved out. This should have been a warning sign but I turned a blind eye. I was married six months later at the age of twenty. We decided to build a new house together but this meant moving back to my parents place and scrimping and saving.

   Me, Doug Mulray, ex- husband Tommy Emmanuel

This was in the mid eighties when the interest rates reached 18%. I took a second job to pay for our mortgage. Of cousrse my husband hated the idea of being in my parents house as it would curtail his freedom which I was not aware that he needed. So we had "one last holiday" before we had to keep our money for saving. We went to Kangaroo Island in South Australia. This was great for us but my parents couldn't work out why we were going on holiday so we could then stay with them and save money! In hindsight neither can I?

We built the house and moved in but we were separated about a year later after I recieved a letter from a swank hotel in the Southern Highlands inviting us back for a stay. It wasn't adressed to me. I had never been to this hotel. My Dad's answer to this was to give me a thousand dollars to go and have some fun. Go and get away from the mess. This is what he had done when my mother had left him many years ago. He packed the family up minus my mother and we all headed to Queensland where it rained solid for two weeks.

I was again in touch with my ex-best mate who was again now my best mate. Her mum was having a mid-life crises at 40 and wanted to travel the world but needed a traveling partner. I was available. So off we went to London, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Paris on a whistle stop bus tour with people that were twice or three times my age. I wanted to break out in Ireland and hook up with a gorgeous dark haired guy but as my traveling companion was strictly catholic and because technically I was still married I kept faithful (to what I really don't know? damn!!!!).

Best mates Mum, Me, Best Mate, Best mate's Sister, Best mate's Dad

on my way to Europe

Meanwhile my husband, soon to be my ex husband, was not at all being faithful. While I was away contemplating our future he was also contemplating another woman, even though he had said it was a one off affair. Secretly, I knew this as I had begun having dreams while overseas that told me the truth. He picked me up from the airport and I played a silly game with fate. I told myself that if he didn't have a bunch of flowers and a warm hug for me, then it was all over. I would walk away. This was after months of him going and then coming back, going and coming back. And there he was waiting for me. The grand homecoming. But there were no flowers, no warm hug.

I got mad then. I kicked him out of our house and he then spent the next 6 months trying to woo me back. Of course he was having his proverbial cake at the same time. I was alone for the next few months in the house that we had scrimped and saved for and now looking to sell it so soon. All my friends kept saying well at least you didn't have any children together. No I agreed. That would have been a disaster. Little did they know that I had wanted to have a child with him early on in our marriage. I had given up on that idea only to have him want to impregnate me right before the fated discovery of his infidelity.

So I went it alone for the next little while............a period of growth and amazing strengthening for myself but not for long as I serendipitously met another man who would become my next husband.