CLAIMS of workplace bullying, forced night shifts, and taking on tasks beyond her job description – Alesia’s* employment experiences in central Victoria have been anything but stable.
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The 22-year-old moved to Bendigo from the Victorian surf coast in 2013, but has found the employment situation dire.
“Because I’m not from Bendigo and don’t know many people, it was really difficult to find anything at all,” she said.
“It’s getting harder every day.”
Despite years of experience as a receptionist at a high school, and managing a restaurant, the offers were not forthcoming. Alesia was forced to seek help from an employment agency who found her a position at a local factory.
She found the business treated her with respect, but could not say the same about the employment agency which managed her employment.
“You start to lose shifts because the agency send more and more people to the workplace to collect $3000 for each employee successfully hired,” Alesia said.
Within months, she was being forced to take on roles beyond her job description. When her employer found out, she was banned for working for more than a week.
The employment agency then forced her to take on night shifts only.
“I would never see my friends or family. I started to get bullied too,” Alesia said.
The final straw was when the agency said they were interviewing people about the workplace bullying claim. But colleagues said they were never contacted.
Alesia injured her hand in an accident and missed several weeks. She was then permanently banned from the site by the employment agency.
She believes her story is just one of many for job seekers in Bendigo, who are finding it increasingly hard to gain working hours.
“Moving to Bendigo, I have found it’s a ‘who you know’, not ‘what you know’ kind of city,” Alesia said.
One Bendigo Advertiser reader, who wished to remain anonymous, has been trying to find work at factories, in retail and in cleaning in Bendigo for more than a year.
She said she has rarely gotten beyond the first step with an employer.
“When I've asked why, they’ve said ‘no reason’, which I personally find is not good enough,” she said.
“I was told because of my size, an employer would look at me as if I were a 70-year-old old man. Just because I'm a big girl doesn’t mean I can't work.
“I’m desperately seeking work at the moment and in risk of homelessness, and because I'm a quiet person and shy when it comes to interviews, I just get shrugged off.”
Their stories were not unique. Routinely, more than 450 people apply for the same casual and part-time jobs in Bendigo seeking a few extra hours work.
Job seekers flood in for just a few positions
Hundreds of applications are flooding in for just a handful of casual and part-time jobs in Bendigo as local workers seek to collect extra hours in the service and hospitality industries.
An advertisement for a casual food and beverage attendant at the Shamrock Hotel received at least 166 online applications in one month.
Casual cleaner’s jobs are also in high demand. One casual position in Bendigo received more than 420 applications in 30 days.
Another casual kitchen hand position in Bendigo attracted 225 applications, while a similar job had attracted the attention of 120 people.
A part-time receptionist position with Heartscope Victoria, based in Bendigo, had 94 applications in eight days.
Employment agency MatchWorks Bendigo assistant site manager Bryden McFarlane said it was common for casual and part-time positions in Bendigo to attract hundreds of applicants.
“That’s definitely not an unusual case. We find that job seekers in Bendigo are often competing with a lot of people for positions,” he said.
“For cleaners, their work is rarely full-time so there’s always a lot of people looking for extra hours and extra work.
“In hospitality there are not as many hours available, so people are looking to top up their hours with other jobs.”
Mr McFarlane said factory jobs and labouring work remained a consistent source of employment for people in Bendigo, but full-time positions remained difficult to come by.
Despite the high number of job seekers looking for extra work, Bendigo’s unemployment rate remained below the regional Victoria average.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics showed the unemployment rate was 5.75 per cent in the September quarter last year, almost identical to the Victorian and Australian average.
There remained more than 3100 unemployed people in Bendigo – the lowest level since June 2012. The figures did not measure the number of people in full-time, part-time or casual employment.
The federal government’s labour market information portal showed Bendigo had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state in 2016.
Bendigo remained the third largest concentrated economic base in Victoria, behind Melbourne and Geelong, according to the City of Greater Bendigo.
From 2002 to 2012, Bendigo’s gross domestic product grew by $1.3 billion, or 3.4 per cent, the fastest rate of Victoria’s regional cities.
*name has been changed