DIANA MAHABIR-WYATT

There is a difference between eligibility and the right to something.

You may be eligible for a promotion and a raise in pay, for example, which means if your performance and attitude justify it, in other words - if you have earned it, you may get it - but you cannot assume you have a right to it. You may be eligible to apply for it though. If you have just done the same thing over and over again, year after year, not learning how to improve your skills, not learning more about how the organisation meets its changing objectives and how you can contribute to them, you probably will remain in the same permanent position.

But, the world is changing around you, employment and trade practices have changed and computerisation has affected every part of the economy including the part you are involved in.

Spanish is a language skill now needed by many organisations involved in trade.

Are you doing the same things in the same way with the same qualifications that you had ten years ago? Five years ago?

I once worked as a consultant doing training for a large insurance company, when towards the end of their financial year, one of the employees in a clerical position went to the human resource manager and quarrelled loudly and aggressively. Although he had been a good employee for the past 20 years, he had not been promoted, while other younger employees who had only been there for far fewer years were being promoted above him. He came with a trainee shop steward from a different company which was unionised, one his wife worked for, who told the HR manager that his union was on a membership drive, intending to organise the employees of the company and he would be there to tell the workers when they were being unfairly treated.

I was actually impressed with him. He was very earnest and upfront about it, saying that in his opinion the workers were being unfairly treated, not in accordance with the principles of good industrial relations. He was a trainee with ambition.

He told the manager that under section 42 (2) and (3) of the Industrial Relations Act, he (manager) could be jailed for a year and fined $10,000 if he tried to threaten, alter the worker's position to their detriment or to adversely affect their employment because they intended to become a member of his trade union.

So he figured he had a right to be there. He didn't, but he was giving it a good try. Fear sometimes works. At least he had studied the Industrial Relations Act.

I happened to be there doing a workshop with supervisors on the principles of good industrial relations, that week, so I could hardly refuse such a good opportunity to use this as an example of what I had been talking about.

The HR manager asked me to tell them in what way they had gone wrong. I had no idea, so the next day I asked the union representative, who came in at lunchtime, what his evidence of unfairness was and not surprisingly, he pointed to the husband who had not been promoted and said he was still doing the same job for the pas