Earlier in the week, the warehouse boss managed to let slip that some truckie had dropped off his brother's or mate's resume for the third warehouse position here. This guy had a forklift licence, so the boss thought it would be convenient to have a third FTE with this licence, which would save training me. I asked, "Should I be looking around for other work?", to which the answer was "Probably yeah."
So I speak to the labour hire agency person to tell them about this, and to get them to line me up some other gig, and they now decide that, since I've been there more than three months on continuous labour hire (bringing in the agency's margin all that time), the agency is now prepared to waive their buy-out fee. I know that the agency told them this earlier in the week, but I heard nothing myself from the warehouse mgmt.
On Thursday last, I asked the boss if I could leave at midday on Friday. Had some business to attend to. Looks like they thought I was going on an intervew or something, because at 11:55am, they say I can officially apply in writing to the upstairs management for the FTE position.
You might care to note that this is STILL not cut and dried, because I have to file an application, which they will no doubt duly consider for however long. Also, they want me to put my wage expectation on the application.
But what was a real shocker was when I asked the warehouse boss and lead hand what hourly rate I should put down. I'm on $18 an hour (remember that's Australian dollars, worth about 90c American) on the labour hire gig. The warehouse boss is on an FTE of $16 an hour. I've been told that maybe $14 an hour is what to expect. That's a bit of a shocker indeed. I didn't realise that FTE warehouse work was pretty much ON the Oz minimum wage.
So I rang another agency who used to get temping work in office admin roles for me up until about a year ago. When the global financial crisis hit back then, all the office temping roles disappeared, which is why I went down the warehousing route. When I spoke to her yesterday arvo (Fri), she said the temping scene is still dead as a doornail, but there are some FTE office work roles out there. She reckoned she could get me $40-45K, which is about $20-22 an hour. A far cry above $14, even if you allow for agency 'blue sky'.
I don't know whether this office admin work will eventuate...I'd probably better speak to the other couple of agencies I was dealing with a year ago as well.....but I just don't think I can get by for the next few years on minimum wage. Just can't do it. So now, I have the ironic situation whereby I have to do what the warehouse company were doing for so long.....delaying a decision as long as possible, and staying on the labour hire arrangement......until I can land a normal-pay office job. They told me to take a little while to decide, but I have difficulty seeing them signing more than another two weekly timesheets without putting me on the spot over this.
On the plus side, my weight finally dipped under 15 stone today for the first time in many a long year. Will just have to make sure I don't let it creep back up again when I'm back to a sedentary lifestyle.
