So as a bit of context, about a year and a half ago I landed my dream job. I grew up with a tradie for a father and spent so many weekends and days off as a kid going to work with him that I decided I don't want to do it for a career myself as I lost interest when I did it so much before I even turned 16. Once I finished school and had enough money I started travelling and realised how much I loved the outdoors, nature and mountains which led me to a small little mountain town in Victoria.
After a while I ended up getting a job at a school outdoor ed camp that a friend worked at doing high rope activities with school kids. It was doing things like rock climbing/abseiling/flying fox and all that fun stuff. I came in to do a trial shift on a Thursday (unpaid) and really enjoyed it and get to meet all the staff of mostly ladies in their 40's or so who had been working there for twenty plus years and who all seemed incredibly nice, friendly and helpful. All in all there was probably about 10 or so staff running the activities, maybe more.
When I came in the next week for my first official shift there were only 3 left. Two that had only worked there for a few months and one lady who stayed that knew how to run every activity. The rest all walked out because of the new manager. Not going to write his name here as I'm still trying to get Fairwork to actually do something about all that you'll read about soon so for now, let's just say his name rhymes with Dam.
So Dam came in to manage the camp just a few weeks prior to my arrival but suffice to say he was not well liked. Prior do Dam the camp was run by the owners son who I was told did a great job and was well liked by all the staff but eventually walked out because of the incredibly shady and downright cruel treatment by his father, which I won't get into because what I know is just hearsay, but I have no doubt there is a huge amount of weight behind it. But now the camp is down to four staff to run a total of 8 activities on offer, all requiring at least two, sometimes four staff to run. This meant that although we were way understaffed to do this, we were still needed to help clean and turn over the rooms after the schools left as they didn't have any designated cleaning staff.
The following week the maintenance manager walked out because of, you guessed it, Dam. Because of my trade background and my ability to do his job I was now given the role of maintenance manager which I was very happy about because that is how I got my dream job in a perfect location. The only issue was that this did not come with a change in pay or contract and I was still needed to run activities when they were running and clean the rooms after the kids have left which left me with one working day throughout the week to get on top of all the maintenance issues. So now I am doing three jobs while getting paid as a high ropes assistant (still what I am currently hired as as the owners and Dam refused to update my contract even though now I am a lead instructor, cleaner and the only maintenance person for a 28 acre aging property with 26 bedrooms, swimming pool, kitchen, dining area and so on) so I'm sure you can see where my initial frustration is coming from.
Now because this was during covid and lockdowns every time I brought this up in an email to Dam or the owners the email was ignored and I never received a response, although if it was otherwise work related I would get a response within minutes. When I did bring it up with the owner over the phone or in person on the rare occasion he would visit the place he would assure me that he agreed with all of my requests but because of covid and lockdown and huge stretches of times where no camps could be run that they just didn't have the money to give me what I was asking at the time and because I had only been working there for a short amount of time and had no reason to not trust anyone as of yet, I believed him and never questioned why he couldn't put that in an email in response to my own. He also told me after maybe two months on the job that the place was looking the best he had seen it in years which made me believe he appreciated the work that I was doing and would give me a contract when he could.
Fast forward until the end of last year and Dam finally bows out as manager which was a big relief to staff as everyone was now at the end of their patience working under him. He would constantly message me to do his job for him on Monday morning so he could get in later, just before the schools arrived and he would be packed up and gone when we got back down after running the last session of the week. And now this brings us to my Christmas Holidays.
On the 27th of December while on holidays camping with my friends I started to receive multiple calls and messages from one of the owners who we can call Shanomi. (For context, the business is one of at least five owned by this family. The matriarch of the family still has everything in her name but is now almost 90 and still doesn't trust her kids enough to sign it over to them even though they do all the running of them as she is too old. The two of her kids that come into this story are Larry, who I've been referring to as the owner so far, and Shanomi who is his sister and the muscle of the two who Larry brings in when he needs help dealing with the results of his fuck-ups.) Now Shanomi uses this camp over the Christmas holidays with her family because why wouldn't you if you owned it, but as none of this was passed on to me and I was given strict instructions to “make sure everything was turned off and locked up” that's what I did. This was obviously not what Shanomi was expecting as she isn't too sure how things run around the camp and how to turn everything back on. Eventually I was called in when I got back from my camping trip, I was living on site and was berated and yelled at for the condition of the place. The pool was dirty (the pool shed had been eaten trough by termites and the only piece of equipment in there that worked was the heater. this meant I had to do everything manually and when no one is there to do that it gets dirty), there was no water (there was a huge iron build up in the bore which caused the pump to seize over Christmas, which I have since fixed. It turns out that this was always a recurring issue and we regularly lost water during camps. it was just the first time since I had taken over the role) and the grass looked like it hadn't been cut in weeks (It hadn't. I was away because it was my Christmas holidays). I was also yelled at and berated by Larry for continually asking to discuss a proper contract for my role which he found so rude that he showed it to his buddies and they all started talking about how rude I was for asking for that (keep in mind that my emails just requested to start a discussion about this as by my second week of working there I was no longer doing the job I was hired for, but for three other roles, two of which came with a significant increase on responsibility).
Now just to keep this short I will skim through the last few months as quick as I can. Larry contracted Ron to come and manage the camp as he had started back full-time work teaching in a school. Ron was amazing at the position right up until he got an email over the weekend that they have accepted his and his partners resignation effective immediately despite the fact that he never officially resigned and his partner never resigned in any way whatsoever. While he was here he created a proper budget for the business of income and expenditure which there never was prior, improved staff morale immensely, brought in a huge amount of improvement in the camp and started to upgrade all the old, worn out things that were constantly breaking from old age. But on top of all of this, after approaching him almost immediately about my workload and low pay he agreed it didn't reflect what I did, looked into it and found that not only was it less than what I deserved, it was less than the legal minimum wage and that I wasn't the only one in that same boat. At that point there was myself and three other staff currently working on below minimum wage which was done under Dam's time as manager with previous staff who had also been paid under minimum. Upon discovering this, Ron was yelled at and berated by the owners for fixing this issue immediately for me and told not to fix it for anyone else (he didn't discover the other three people until the following week when he had time to check every staff member). It wasn't until they finally got notice from Fairwork that they gave Ron permission to fix the remaining staff members pay and even longer until they finally gave in and back paid us what we were owed, still without an apology.
As of now, Fairwork have done nothing but give them a warning and ask them not to do it again but I am still working with the Fairwork comission about how they refused to offer me a casual conversion contract which they were obligated to after 12 months working there and still refuse to give me when it's almost been a year and a half.
And all this brings us up to today where I am writing this at home after taking the day off as we have no manager but instead the owners are coming in to run as temporary managers for today until there is a replacement coming in tomorrow before the next school arrives (most likely Dam but not certain yet).
Now if you'll recall I mentioned earlier that they own multiple other businesses. This is the only one that is making a profit. All of the money from this goes into all the other failing businesses to try and keep them alive which means anytime a manager tries to put money back into the camp to improve it or to increase anyone's pay, the owners quickly get rid of them, including Larry's own son. While under Ron's control the business started to prosper and was making more money than it has since this family took ownership but because he was questioning their practices and fixing problems at the camp and with the staff with the money coming from the camp he was let go. And now nobody wants to work there anymore, they're about to have their second mass walk out of staff in less that two years (possibly seventh in total which I heard from a lady who has worked there far longer than me) and are going to loose almost a hundred thousand dollars per camp as there may very well not be any staff left when they come up. But until my investigation with Fairwork is over I will continue to show up to let each and every school know why there are no staff left to run the camp or until I am fired which will hopefully happen soon.
TL/DR: Owners continually breaking workplace laws, making like as hard as possible for employees and destroying their only business that makes money. Fairwork doing almost nothing to fix it
EDIT: Forgot to mention I am soon to be homeless and living out of my van again as I'm being kicked out of staff accom and don't make enough to afford my own rental where I live