No Written Contracts

Workers were not employed under any sort of contract, nor were their jobs ever defined. You could be employed on the job as a magician, for example, but find that you were required to go and take a workshop for primary school children in stage craft without any prior experience. This particularly concerned artists employed at the centre when the Summer City programme was finished, who believed they deserved the right to refuse activities they had not been trained for.

Artists were told that although the Labour Department provided up to $20 per worker per week for Labour Related Overheads they must supply all their own make-up. The director, Stephen Nelson, said that none of this money could be spent on anything that would not stay at the Arts Centre when the programme was over. As the make-up would be wiped off on to toilet paper and thrown away the Arts Centre was not prepared to make any reimbursements.

This goes against the Labour Department's intentions in providing LRO. They insist that this money not be spent on acquiring capital goods for the employer but is to pay expenses incurred during an employee's work.

On one occasion during the Summer City programme, artists recieved a call to work on a statutory holiday - 9.00am on January 2. Workers arriving five minutes late were docked two hours pay. The Live Subsidised Award (known as document 868) clearly states that no deductions can be made on a statutory holiday.

Even in the area of morning and afternoon tea award conditions were not being met. While other workers around the city were enjoying the tea and coffee provided for them at their work place, workers at the Arts Centre were searching for twenty cent pieces to feed into a machine.