Extra duties - employed as Instructor, they want to use me as IT practitioner

[miguel]

Hello

A couple of issues.

I work for a multinational conglomerate providing instructing services to a huge govt. department.

I am employed as an IT instructor. I have several formal quals in IT.

Issue 1:
Now 8 months in they tell me they want me to service and maintain the customers IT equipment. Absolutely nothing in the employment docs, advertisements or awards about this. I think the govt. department employs a public servant to do these tasks but he doesn't want to. I think my employer doesn't want to rock the boat and risk the contract so they just tell us to do this work.

Issue 2:
A part of the job is the requirement to get a teaching qual. They tell us to get the qual 'in our own time' but do not pay wages for this extra time. I believe this is wage theft.

Questions:
I'm seriously considering taking industrial action on the basis that the job instructor is fundamentally different to IT practitioner. I've research other similar scenarios and zero of them have their instructors also servicing and maintaining the equipment.

If I take them to FWO, what's the likelihood of my success?

Any tips of how to proceed?

Regards
Migz.

 

[Martis]

Oof 😬 extra duties — Instructor suddenly moonlighting as IT practitioner? Classic role creep + spaghetti vibes 😅 Suddenly it’s not just “teach the course,” but responsibilities, contracts, classification, and entitlements all doing a cha-cha 👀

Most headaches come from upstream fuzziness: vague contracts, informal “just help out” vibes, or unclear job scopes. Once HR or Fair Work gets involved, it’s a tangle of evidence, role expectations, and compliance checks 😬

Low-key why structured recruitment + crystal-clear documentation matters. Platforms like AcademicJobs.com are clutch — formalised position descriptions, transparent duty statements, and compliance-aligned pipelines help clarify exactly what your role entails from day dot, especially in academia/research roles where multi-tasking across teaching, admin, and IT can get… messy 😅

Anyway, loving this convo — extra duties / role creep nuance deserves way more airtime than it usually gets 😂