New pay rates for techies and performers

"From January 1st, everyone is now under an award. Technicians, floor crew, musicians, strippers. Everyone. Suddenly everyone working behind the scenes in entertainment is covered by a national minimum award wage system. The Fair Work Act provided simplified awards from January 1st 2010 to all workers including those not unionised. This somewhat radical change affects all industries, and has seen 1,700 federal and state awards condensed into around 120 ‘modern awards’. For those covered by an enterprise agreement or contract, then life remains the same â€“ provided they are not worse off under the new award. So the new award really is the bottom pay, and everyone will quickly come to know what they should get. The devil is in the detail. If you are not currently covered by either an award or an enterprise agreement, then your minimum rates of pay are affected from January 1st." Complete article here: http://theatretechgeek.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/new-pay-rates-2010/ ... Seems the new pay rates are also based on your level of qualifications, not just on what you're hired to do... (Lucky for me I have a Dip., otherwise I'd get low rates!)

It was my great misfortune to get hijacked into being an employee rep. during that non profit organisation's attempt to create an EBA. Talk about mind blowing. I hope I never have to do that again, although now I've got some experience I suppose I should. It's very hard to keep one eye on the big picture while you're settling on small details, very easy to forget something and suddenly realise a crucial area has been forgotten, or is just a bad deal for employees. On the other hand there are a lot of people out there who just couldn't even begin to negotiate an OK deal for themselves, which is where EBAs are supposed to offer some protection. I am torn on the subject! "Life is too short to stuff a mushroom"

EBA

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