Having been born with Epilepsy, it creates more problems than people tend to realise, in some cases they are worse than others.
I had Epilepsy from when I was 3 years old. Since then I have had difficulties in getting through education, which on the other hand made it difficult to get work.
Sometimes when I first worked it was for duration of 6 months, I was not working or may have been hospitalized for 2 months.
Eventually I got back to work in those days which lasted for between 6-8 months. In my best entire job, I worked away from home for about 5 months, then the Christmas holidays began and I was asking the personnel officer if I could also go on leave, even though it wasn't due for another 7 months.
The personnel officer gave the green light, so when I got to my home, then I rang my parents to let them know I will be on holidays shortly.
Before going on I would like to go back on the outline of the Speedo Knitting Mills as having been the best employer in those days as on one occasion when I had a seizure it was so serious so the personnel manager Mr Garrett had taken me home to my address in Beauty Point which was quite a distance but due to the kindness of Mr Garrett his kindness put Speedo as being the best employer in those days.
When we got to my sisters house Mr Garrett went to the door and rang the bell, then he outlined to my sister as to why he drove me home from Artarmon which to my amazement showed the care and concern Mr Garrett showed and that explains the reason Speedo is regarded as the best employer in those days.
The staff at Speedo had shown a wonderful caring group who had been encouraging things to suit me best in those areas in those days and as the Sister-in-charge of the First Aid Section, she was a wonderful nature and attended to occurrences that arose in differing areas on certain occasions.
One of the marvels of the Speedo Knitting Mills was that whenever I had a seizure the Sister-in-charge was there straight away and they never tended to dismiss me because of the illness, which explains why they were regarded as the best employer in those days.
So as you can see Speedo was the best employer in those days and they are still regarded as the best employer in the Private area and Army Health Records in the Government area.
One of the wonderful things Mr Garrett did was he gave meleave for the Christmas break to be able to go and celebrate it with my family.
I spent 2 weeks with the whole entire family at that stage, then I went home with my parents to their hometown of Melbourne to which I'd become accustomed to and hadn't lived away from home longer in the past, which made it difficult to return to the environment in Sydney.
Had I have returned I probably would have been there longer than in any other job I would have had in Australia.
Since then the picture has been dull over recent years due to the fact that I went in and out of jobs on regular occasions. It happened constantly till a few years ago when the unemployment situation got worse than ever before.
From then onwards it has been more difficult to get or hold a job, and it still is, all being due to the employment history of the past. Sometimes it was the fault of the employer.
One example is when I worked for a store in the food industry and was asked by the manager to do one job, and then whilst the manager was gone from the store the assistant manager
asked me to do another job. I didn't do it straight away, and as soon as the manager walked in, the assistant manager complained about me, which in the end lost me the job.
Employment as you can visualize has been one of the vast problems, the reasons why are not clearly understood, in some way the employer blames me whilst in other ways I blame the employer. The solvent hasn't been found by either group at present. On the other hand
the Federal Government has done little if anything to encourage me to work instead of having
to depend on the pension on and off.
After all it's the Federal Government Departments responsibilities to help enable me to get a job, which in the long term, which will make more benefits, they are:
1 Enable me to be independent; 2 Reduce Social Security costs 3 Earn the Government more in taxation 4 Reduce the number of disabled people out of work; 5 Improve social justice in the Community 6 Recognize the rights of the handicapped to equal status within the economic community.
