17 July 2008

Maximum child working hours in Canberra?

| Pesty
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Does any one know where on the web I can find the hours a 14 year old may legally work, in total & without a break etc.

Please.

Every state seems to post such info other than the ACT.

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peterh said :

astrojax said :

we used to ‘aff t’ work 18 hours down mine, and pay mine keeper for privilege, come ‘ome, cook, clean, wash dog, tile the roof and invent petroleum combustion engine, and then our father would slash us to death with a bread knife and dance about on our grave, singing ‘alleluhah’.

but try telling the kids of today that, and they won’t believe ya.

looxury!

ay, life was good were it not?

Thanks again everyone for the help, hope you can see my point that the info was a bit elusive! I hope that others have benefitted too.

astrojax said :

we used to ‘aff t’ work 18 hours down mine, and pay mine keeper for privilege, come ‘ome, cook, clean, wash dog, tile the roof and invent petroleum combustion engine, and then our father would slash us to death with a bread knife and dance about on our grave, singing ‘alleluhah’.

but try telling the kids of today that, and they won’t believe ya.

looxury!

we used to ‘aff t’ work 18 hours down mine, and pay mine keeper for privilege, come ‘ome, cook, clean, wash dog, tile the roof and invent petroleum combustion engine, and then our father would slash us to death with a bread knife and dance about on our grave, singing ‘alleluhah’.

but try telling the kids of today that, and they won’t believe ya.

amarooresident12:06 pm 18 Jul 08

The ACT is under the Federal IR system so your best bet would be to contact the relevant part of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations or the Workplace Ombudsman. Numbers in the phone book.

Back when I used to work retail years ago, they used to employ 14 year and 9 month olds.

I dunno if this was true though

The relevant info is contained in Chapter 10 of the Children and Young People Act http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/act/consol_act/caypa1999242/

Based on a quick reading of this and the Education Act, employing a 14yo in retail is illegal UNLESS it is a family business.

For future reference, all legislation is available at http://www.austlii.edu.au or somewhere on the ACT govt site.

thank you all for the in-put. The young lady in question was happy to do the work,(9 hours retail) it was us “olds” that were questioning the legalities of it. The thing that prompted the post here was the total lack of info from an ACT gov. site. other states are well represented.

thanks again to all who helped.

9 hours, including lunch break, so, 8 hours!

And they cant work past 10pm without parent’s permission 🙂

(Cant you tell? i’m also a underage type retail slave? :D)

Is this just a general question or has it come out of a dispute?

That’d depend on what particular agreement the kid was working under; as a general rule people wont give people longer than 9hrs so as to avoid overtime.
your best bets probably just to speak to (or even better get the 14yr old to speak to) who ever is running the workplace, 14yr olds are like gold because they are so cheap so most managers would be willing to do just about anything to hold onto them.

As the kids 14 i’m going to guess they work in retail (correct me if i’m wrong) so the relevant union would be the SDA, they do have an ACT site, but the NSW one contains a lot more information. (www.sdansw.org.au)If its a dispute they’d be the best ones to talk too.

finally if it is a dispute with a manager giving too long shifts etc… go and talk to them (or even better get the 14yr old to), in my experience most people are pretty reasonable about these things and the vast majority of problems surrounding young staff start because the kid feels intimdated about having to go and negioitate with a boss for the first time.

There used to be rules for kids of 15 or under, they needed permission from their school prinicpal to work full tiem (and not be at school), and there were exceptions for kids in family businesses. Dunno who regulates it now though.

The only difference for adults and children is that under a certain age they can’t work past a certain hour, nine pm I think.

Doubt there is a maximum, my big recommendation is not to work for Coles Gungahlin. They care little for employees and will often give 9 hour shifts

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