The following is abridged from a speech by Tom Hagan on behalf of TAFE Students Against Slave Wages to the August 19 trade union protest in Perth. Hagan is a member of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the socialist youth organisation Resistance.
I am a second year apprentice refrigeration and air conditioning technician angry at the attacks by the Liberal government on young workers, TAFE students and apprentices.
With the introduction of the new industrial relations bill, apprentices and trainee workers will not be paid for the time spent in formal training. This will mean, at a minimum, an automatic 20% pay cut due to one day a week spent at TAFE.
I take home $210 per week. This is barely enough to survive on. Under the new bill, my pay will drop to $169 per week, only a fraction more than the dole while I work five days a week.
Employers will also be able to place apprentices and trainees on workplace agreements. For the majority of workers, it is difficult enough to refuse a workplace agreement. When I left high school, my friends and I had no idea what a workplace agreement was and would have signed anything the employer put in front of us.
TAFE students and apprentices are vulnerable unless we organise ourselves and fight against cuts to our standard of education, training, wages and conditions.
In the 1940s apprentices organised and won the right for paid daytime off-the-job training. With the Liberal government trying to turn back the clock, we need to join our unions and get involved in campaigns against this legislation. It's time to form a TAFE students' and apprentices' union to work alongside existing industry unions. If we don't fight, we'll lose.