Sydneyside with Janet Parr So you want to work in Sydney?

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32803, 31 December 1971, Page 5

Sydneyside with Janet Parr So you want to work in Sydney?

So you'd like to come to work in Sydney? ! You’d like to come; over and get a job and see something! of the country? If that’s! the way you feel you’re not on your- own. Plenty have “thousands and thousands” said a New Zealand girl who’s been here 12 years “They all seem to live around Bondi and Coogee.”

I was so busy contemplating, with an awful fascination, the prospect of wall-to-wall “Kiwis” in Bondi and Coogee, that I forgot to ask where she lives herself. But no matter. I think she was probably exaggerating a bit.

While I can’t quite accept her “thousands and thousands” I would accept that probably thousands have come; "that they are still coming and that there will be more.

Why? Well, apart from the ones who come for wider experience in a specific job the reasons are probably difficult to put into adequate words. Sydney’s a bigger city with all a bigger city’s bounty of intangibles. It’s a restless age. With working conditions being what they are the young don’t, as a rule, find it too hard to save up the fare to take them somewhere. Whether what they find when they arrive is what they hoped for is anybody’s guess and probably nobody’s business but their own.

But it is possible to make some theoretical assessment of what a New Zealand girl might want and what she might find when she arrives here. And what she usually wants is a job. It is not as easy to find work in Sydney as it was a year ago, however.

Heaven may, as the old song says, protect the working girl, but a steady job pays for the rent and the groceries and getting your shoes heeled. There are some Sydney employers, though, who wouldn’t use the word “steady.” There is a tendency among them to be reluctant to employ New Zealand girls because they think they won’t stay. “There is some prejudice” said an interviewer at one of Sydney’s big employment agencies dealing mainly with secretarial and clerical vacancies. “And it can make it difficult to find jobs for New Zealanders.”

I’d heard the same thing a day or two earlier from a secretary who herself, though reasonably well qualified, had difficulty "finding something. The prejudice can cut across various kinds of employment. Another agency which deals in a variety of jobs, for waitresses, salesgirls, domestic and clerical staff, had found it something of a problem too. Both

agencies emphasised that if a girl is willing to take what is offering, though it may not be what she wants, it should be possible to place her eventually. One solution is to go on to the books of an agency which supplies temporary staff, although for office work this needs reasonably good skills, such as 100/60 in shorthand/typing, for instance. It is possible to find temporary and casual work on your own by checking the newspaper advertisements but there is a fair amount of competition. DOMESTIC WORK

There are, of course, some! jobs in which the shortage; iof people to do them is j recognised as being worldwide—nurses and teachers' for example. I’d be inclined! to add another one —i domestic workers. For the girl with no particular train-j ing and skills, but with a! reasonable amount of com-' mon sense and some know-! ledge of what keeps a house J running, domestic work often j has a lot to offer in the way! of pay and conditions. i It can supply a girl with! a friendly, ready - made family, self-contained accommodation in one of Sydney’s, richer suburbs, well-defined hours and conditions of employment, a wage of about $3O a week which is all

pocket money after tax is paid. If she has a sympathetic employer, there is a chance to do part-time study if she wants it. And there is a shortage of domestic help. Teachers can be fairly sure of getting a job but might find it a good idea to do their homework before they come. Minimum qualification is a recognised course of teacher - training. Anything added to this in the way of a degree and experience earns credit and makes acceptance even more certain. Applications are studied by a committee of the N.S.W. Department of Education, which decides suitability and, on acceptance, status and salary. Evidence of qualifications is needed and I gather that some contact is made back to New Zealand in the sending out of a form. So a teacher who wanted to start work right away would probably find it better to apply with the necessary evidence before leaving New Zealand.

WELL-PAID I’m told that N.S.W. teachers are the best paid in Australia and that no teacher who has taught would start on the minimum. And I gather that a teacher wouldn’t necessarily be expected to stay for ever. Neither apparently would a nurse, according to the head of a nurses employment agency who says she can place a girl even if it’s only for a few months. Many girls come to her through word of mouth and a lot of New Zealanders among them. “They

seem to adjust very well and to be very good at the job. And it's all experience for them,” she said. Nurses, she says, are well, paid. A registered community! nurse from New Zealand, can earn about $6O for a 40-hour week and if she lives in, board and lodging doesn’t take more than a nominal amount. Income tax is higher here than in New Zealand and if a girl wanted to live; away from the hospital she! would find her cost of living would go up considerably, i Girls can be placed in private or public hospitals or on

private cases. ■ Usually they prefer to! ;work in hospitals because! I they can organise their social j Hives better. To work here! !they must have character! preferences and documentary ! evidence of qualifications.' Armed with those they | should not have any trouble ! getting jobs. Generally speaking, it isn’t I the girls who have trained

and are skilled in a specific | job who are likely to run into trouble. There are ! specialised agencies that deal [with them—a run through ! the classified telephone directory “the pink pages,” .will give the names of them. The serious newspapers sep-; arate vacancies in educational and medical fields, physiotherapists and pharmacists for instance.

The present market rate for a top secretary, a senior girl of about 24 with five or six years experience is from about $6O to $6B a week. A “steno” or less important secretary—the “importance” refers more to the boss than the girl—could expect from $56 to $6O a week. Working conditions would probably be comparatively pleasant. Harder to place are the younger girls with not much experience and no very clear ! idea of what they want to ! do, except that they would like it to be something “initeresting.” And increasingly, I am told, it is the young girls who are coming, many of them only 18. “There are a lot of mediocre jobs,” I was told. “Insurance companies maybe, things like that. They aren’t very interesting in themselves. The girls don’t want them. They all want to do something terribly unusual and interesting—something different.”

STOP-GAP WORK But the willingness to accept the humdrum may make all the difference between finding a job within a week of arriving and not finding one for some time while your money runs out and you enthusiasm dwindles.

Waitresses, if they have experience, can usually be sure of jobs. The basic wage is about $3B a week. But a girl would find it hard to live on that, unless she lived in on the job with some deduction made for board and lodging. Waitressing does

offer chances to work in some of the resort areas, though. A quick check of the “positions vacant —women and girls” columns of a Saturday morning newspaper shows there is little glamour attached to most of the jobs—clerking at Marrickville, keeping the books in Bankstown, for instance. You might work the afternoon shift in a biscuit factory or manage a shop selling modern art in a suburban shopping centre. Hairdressers seem to have a choice, mainly in suburban salons. Suburban jobs have something to offer in that you can jlive close to your work and cut down on accommodation iand travelling costs. But you | don’t see much of the “swing- ! ing city” except at weekends.

ACCOMMODATION Whether any job would be self-supporting in the sense that a girl could afford to live in a flat of her own is; doubtful. Economically, and probably psychologically too, a girl would be better off sharing a house or flat with others. Very few Australian girls getting away from home and setting up on their own can afford not to share. All of this of couse applies equally to men though they may have a wider range of jobs to pick from. In spite of this they seem to run into trouble—jobless and down to their last dollar—much more than girls. One New Zealand girl I spoke to exploded over “men, married ones with children, too, some of them” who got down to their last five dollars and went looking for help. ■ “I tell them: ‘You can wash cars can’t you?’ ” she said. “And they say: ‘What? Me wash cars?’ Sometimes you don’t have too much choice.”

In her opinion a girl would be silly to come here with less than her return fare and $2OO. Most landlords demand a bond which can be up to four weeks rent. If you’re going to share a flat or house at $4O a week, which wouldn’t be unreasonable, you would need your share of perhaps $l6O. And when you’re stocking the pantry even things such as salt and pepper can add up. You need fares for travelling to interviews and you won’t get paid until the end of your first week in the job so you have to eat and pay fares until then. It might be worth while putting off the trip for g time while you save up a bit more.

And don’t expect that if you go broke the New Zealand High Commissioner’s office will be happy to pay the fare for you to go home. They won’t unless you’re sick or there’s a real compassionate reason in New Zealand for doing it—a death in the family, for instance. And they’ll expect the fare money to be paid back.