Kerre Woodham: Job trials offer a lucky break

Over the years as a journalist, I've worked for a number of different media organisations - telly, radio and print.

A thoroughly enjoyable career it's been, too. And at every production company, radio station or publication, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young kids have turned up, desperate to begin a glittering career in the media and willing to work for nothing for the experience they'll get and the contacts they'll make.

One of the best cameramen I know started off at TV3 working for nothing. As a young pup, he shared a poxy flat with five other trainees.

Terry was on a two week unpaid work experience. After that, he just stayed, still without a wage, and worked every hour God sent to scrape together enough money to survive while he learned the tools of the trade.

The company got an enthusiastic worker bee for nothing; the kid got the experience he needed to get him the first foothold on the ladder of a career that's taken him all around the world and to the top of his game.

I suppose the unions would see it as exploitation but Terry was grateful for the opportunity and TV3 got a talented young camera assistant for nothing.

Surely a win/win situation. And isn't that what the 90-day trial is all about? Workers being given an opportunity to show their worth to an employer who may be uneasy about taking on new staff?

I've had a couple of small business owners tell me that they would love to have given a chance to people with patchy work records - one guy had been unemployed for years but had just had a baby and wanted to provide for his family; another was fresh out of prison.

In both cases, the employers said their gut instinct was that these men were good 'uns, but they weren't prepared to hire them in case their instinct was wrong and they ended wasting untold time and money they could ill afford to lose going through a grievance case.

There are also those who are technically proficient at what they do but are monumental pains in the arse to work with and who can be terribly damaging to a small- or medium-sized business that requires its staff to work together co-operatively. If you can trial workers to see how they fit with the rest of the team, that must be a good thing.

The trial period that allowed small business owners with a staff of fewer than 20 to hire and fire within the 90 days seems to have been successful: A Department of Labour study of more than 900 employers found that 40 per cent of them would not have taken on new staff had it not been for the scheme.

And it's been operating successfully in Australia and the United Kingdom where the unions have much more clout, so it's hard to see why our union representatives are getting so up in arms.

My cloth-cap columnist colleague Matt McCarten will no doubt have a completely different view and I look forward to reading it.

I've heard suggestions that employers will exploit this scheme, hiring and firing over three month periods, but that just doesn't make sense. Every job, no matter how menial, has a process that must be learned and followed and it simply wouldn't be economic or productive to take on newbies every three months.

No, for all the union wailing and gnashing of teeth over what they call the loss of a fundamental human right, potential employees should see this as an opportunity to work their way into a job - just as that talented young man at TV3 did all those years ago.