He won with a perfect score, but found a more mixed response when he announced from the stage that his cash prize was being donated to the your rights at work campaign (the negative response being the pained cries of his friends who’d thought they could persuade him to put it on the bar).

heh

PS – blogging at work is fun and easy when your boss has had to go and have a quick nana nap

… from this morning’s rally in Canberra.

Important for all the family.

Update: lots more photos in the Your Rights at Work flickr group.

Before having a child, I worked in permanent or longish (three year) contract public servant type positions. I left my job after Sage was born because we moved cities, in part because we were unable to afford to stay in Sydney on one wage for any length of time. I started work again when Sage was 18 months old; for the last 2 1/2 years I’ve worked a string of casual, short-term or contract positions, mostly part time. During that time my partner’s had two jobs, with only a couple of days in between, so things could be a lot worse.

I’ve appreciated being able to do interesting and professional work as a part time – and I’ve been very lucky in that respect. But we’ve had one week’s holiday in that three and half years, because in a short term job it’s can be difficult to ask and difficult to receive approval for leave. Particularly if you need time off for illness/surgery/child illness as I have. (And yes, I’m shitty because we were going to have a holiday next week and the friend we’d planned to visit has to go overseas for work.)

Andrew asks whether “the new industrial relations laws will contribute to job insecurity in any significant way“. I would think so, what with the getting sacked more easily part. I also think there might be a lowering of expectations, particularly amongst younger workers – I know my parents think the kind of “career path” I’ve had to be pretty frightening. He also links to a Roy Morgan survey finding last year that people have the highest level of perceived job safety since 1975, when they began asking the question. I don’t worry about losing my job, but that’s largely a function of my partner having secure work. I do worry about getting another one when the inevitible happens and the economy falters (and after this other baby I’m growing, of course).

For instance I was heating up my lunch just then in the kitchen* when I spotted an ice cream container on the counter with a note on top. I hoped it was an invitation to make off with homemade cake or something, but it said

Not just clever, but kind and thoughtful too.

* The baby gets hungry very early. I mustn’t look pregnant yet (just horribly fat) because people still look askance when I eat lunch early. So it was very nice to be able to say “If you were having lamb shanks braised in red wine and balsamic vinegar on polenta with some gremolata on top you’d want it at half past eleven too.”

BUT, she reconsiders the next day – it’s dumb to feed the magpies anything! They’ll still associate people at the table with getting fed, and try and peck me at lunch. No decoy bread for YOU, little birdy.