How careers nights have changed! South Australia’s peak business lobby, Business SA, is now offering seminars for university students on the new workplace relations system. A flyer circulated by the Careers & Employer Liaison Centre at Flinders University in Adelaide’s south invites students to the session early next month:

Workplace Relations for New Entrants to the Workforce

Are you new or about to enter the workforce?

Are you unsure about how the changes to Australia’s workplace relations system will affect you?

Come to a short (45 Min) information session and learn about the protection, opportunities and flexibilities available to you under Australia’s workplace relations system.

Discover what your rights are and the obligations of your employer.

Topics covered include:

  • Who is covered by the new system?
  • What are awards and agreements and how do they work?
  • Frequently asked questions on dismissal, going on strike, making a complaint
  • Where to go to for help

Business SA is an affiliate of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a member of the Business Coalition for Workplace Reform, the group behind the current controversial advertising campaign highlighting the benefits of changes to industrial relations laws over the past two decades. Business SA and similar groups around the country have always provided assistance for their members on industrial relations matters. It’s part of the basic services they offer.

This, however, appears to be something different. The timing is interesting. And it’s certainly attracted the interest of the union movement. Is it anything to get excited about? Crikey emailed Business SA with some basic questions on the seminar – if it’s being conducted in other universities, in schools, how long it’s been running for and so on – but had not received a response at the time of going to publication.

We’d be very interested to hear of anything similar in other states.

And with the workplace relations laws – and their cumbersome, bureaucratic nature – continuing to cause controversy, Crikey has advice for students nearing their graduation. Become an industrial relations consultant. Anyone seems able to hang out a slate, from shyster lawyers to union standover merchants.

In the current environment you’ll make a motza. Enjoy it while it lasts, kids.