Do you remember your first job for good or bad reasons?

WE all remember our first job, sometimes for the wrong reasons.

For some of us, it was the first step on the path to financial independence. For others it was an important part of building their self-esteem and equpipped them with skills they have carried through life.

But often, it was something we’d rather forget. For many young workers, illegal pay, unsafe working conditions and bullying are what they experienced in their first job.

How to avoid those bad experiences, and what to do if you are confronted with them, is the subject of a new play being performed to high school students in Victoria.

Called Work! It’s an Experience it aims to equip 14- and 15-year-olds with some basic knowledge of their rights at work before they begin their first job.

At that age, it may be a short spell of full-time work experience in an environment they hope to make their career; or it may be a weekend or after school job totalling a few hours a week.

Either way, teenagers have the same workplace rights as adults. They are not on-tap as a cheap and malleable workforce to be exploited by employers.
Using humour to educate
Work! It’s an Experience uses humour to illustrate some common scenarios that young people will encounter in their first job.

The play is produced by Melbourne’s Red Stitch Actors Theatre, from a script by Peter Houghton, and is directed by Anne Browning.

It is the brainchild of Greg Day, whose Edunity marketing and media company has a long association with the union movement as developer of the ACTU’s Worksite for students, and Dr First Job on Facebook.

The website gets about 100,000 visits a year, but Mr Day said he wanted to create something with more “sizzle and excitement” that would cut through to young people.

With that brief, he approached the Red Stitch actors’ collective to see if they would be interested in collaborating on a project.

“There’s too many websites these days, and I thought we need a more memorable intervention in schools, something they will remember for years and say that was a highlight of their days in school,” Mr Day says. “The play is a dramatic intervention in that way.”

Peter Houghton developed a script based on Mr Day’s brief that the play must be educational and entertaining.

WATCH: a preview of the play Work! It’s an Experience

httpvh://youtu.be/7IJZ-EWbOpU

The plot centres on three young friends in their first jobs.

Ngaire finds a part-time job in an Italian restaurant, where she suffers sexual harassment from her 40-year-old boss, has no proper training and has shifts cancelled with no notice. Her ambition is to work in advertising, but her dream is shattered when the agency she does work experience at steals her ideas without payment.

Tim works in a surf and dive shop, where after three weeks of unpaid work, he unknowingly is paid under award wages as cash in hand, with none of his entitlements to superannuation or workers compensation.

And Sonya works casually in a perfume shop where she is bullied by a bitchy workmate.

In their own way, each discovers they do have rights and decides to fight back for regular shits, proper pay, freedom from bullying and harassment and protection from unfair dismissal. They even investigate how to join a union.

“It’s a story based on these underlying themes with three actors and minimal props, an all-singing, all-dancing show in 45 minutes,” says Mr Day.

The show is enjoyable. The performance attending by Working Life had the audience in thrall, frequently bursting into peels of laughter, and fully engaged with the topic — a rare achievement for a roomful of 14- and 15-year-olds.

That’s no doubt helped by the fact that the play features professional actors working off a well-structured script.

The performance is followed by a Q&A session with representatives from a union and an employer organisation. There is no propaganda, but the young people are given information about how they can find out more about their rights at work.
ACTU keen to see it succeed
The concept has an important backer in ACTU Secretary Dave Oliver, who is keen to see it succeed.

In his previous role as National Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Mr Oliver would regularly visit trade schools, TAFEs and apprentice training sessions to impress on young people their rights at work, and the role of unions in helping to enforce them.

He said the union movement had a commitment to young people, but sometimes found it difficult to engage or access them.

“We’re very keen to play in this space,” Mr Oliver says. “If I had a dollar for every time a delegate asked me what are you doing to get to young people, I could retire tomorrow.”

After a series of pilot peformances last year, Work! It’s an Experience has begun its first full season with 22 performances this month at schools around Melbourne and Geelong.

It’s a modest start, but Mr Day has ambitions to extend it to other states.