{"id":3654,"date":"2018-12-07T08:31:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T08:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/?p=3654"},"modified":"2025-12-16T11:05:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T11:05:47","slug":"from-workplace-bullying-to-certificate-iii-printer-aaron-georges-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/news\/from-workplace-bullying-to-certificate-iii-printer-aaron-georges-story\/","title":{"rendered":"From workplace bullying to Certificate III – printer Aaron George’s story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Digital Inkjet label press operator Aaron George, who runs the Screen Truepress Jet L350UV at Marrickville converter\u00a0DS Labels<\/a>, has been awarded his\u00a0Certificate III in Printing<\/a>\u00a0by Ultimo TAFE Instructor Rick Moore, despite being legally blind and hearing impaired.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be a challenge but only if you make it a challenge,\u201d says 28-year-old George, who remains humble and philosophical as he recounts his inspirational story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a genetic condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa that causes cells in the retina to degenerate slowly. I was born with it but I didn\u2019t get diagnosed until I was ten, so my peripheral vision is slowly coming in, narrowing. So, eventually, I will go blind. There\u2019s no cure for it just yet. I was also born deaf so I wear hearing aids as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

His outlook and drive are lessons in overcoming disabilities: \u201cYou\u2019ve just got to work around things and be willing to put in the hard yards to be successful. You can dwell on things but dwelling is not going to get you anywhere, you know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

George joined the medium sized self-adhesive label printer, owned by MD Deane Sproule and situated in the Sydney industrial hub of Marrickville, about seven years ago after experiencing his share of workplace bullying elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was victimised and bullied and he couldn\u2019t get a go anywhere he went, he just couldn\u2019t get a go,\u201d says Aaron\u2019s uncle Mark George, production manager at DS Labels. \u201cBut he\u2019s a worker and being here he\u2019s grown up. His attitude to life has changed because he\u2019s wanted here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aaron says the job changed the course of his life: \u201cThere is workplace bullying out there and a lot of people like to hide that and say there isn\u2019t, but there is. I can\u2019t thank Deane enough, to be honest. It\u2019s a huge deal to me and remarkable. I\u2019ve been here for seven years and I\u2019m now building a house. I originally came from a little bush town that only had about a thousand people. I did the whole \u2018move from the country to the city and changed my life\u2019 kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aaron started out packing boxes at DS Labels but was soon growing restless. \u201cThey needed someone to do the packing so I came in and, no offence, but packing boxes was a bit boring for me.\u00a0\u00a0When I saw the new digital press, I thought: \u2018How can I work on that?\u2019 From that point on, Mark showed me how to run it and Deane saw that I took a great interest in the machine and, yeah, the ball just kept rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sproule says Aaron was a perfect fit for the company\u2019s Screen\u00a0Truepress Jet L350UVfrom Jet Technologies, installed about three and a half years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cAaron is legally blind, he can\u2019t hold a driver\u2019s licence, he can\u2019t safely walk down the street after sunset, and he also has hearing aids,\u201d says Sproule. \u201cWith his peripheral vision loss, it would have been very difficult for him to run a traditional printing machine. He would have all sorts of trouble because he wouldn\u2019t be able to see the work. But one of the advantages of the Truepress is that for set-up, you run one frame, stop it, and then you can make your adjustments. So it\u2019s the perfect machine for Aaron. When it came in, we looked for someone who could do it and we wanted someone who was young, someone who wasn\u2019t afraid of computers and who had the ability and the get-up-and-go to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark George says: \u201cWhen we were thinking about this machine I thought, \u2018Aaron\u2019s got the computer skills and there\u2019s a good chance he could run this thing.\u2019 Jet Technologies had one in their demonstration centre for a while and they gave Aaron three weeks of training over there and he took to it like a duck.\u201d<\/p>\n

The power of a trade qualification<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(l-r) Rick Moore, TAFE NSW; Dean Sproule, MD\u00a0D.S. Labels<\/a>; Aaron George, press operator; Mark George, production manager<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Sproule encouraged Aaron to take his training further.\u201cWe said to Aaron, look, you\u2019re a young guy, you might want to travel the world, you can go anywhere and say, \u201cI\u2019m a qualified digital operator,\u201d but you won\u2019t have any proof. So why don\u2019t you get a trade certificate, which is what he\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very cooperative schedule and Rick Moore from TAFE NSW was able to come in here and train on-site. For Rick to come in here today and present Aaron with his Certificate III shows Rick\u2019s commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n

TAFE\u2019s Moore says: \u201cAaron is delightful and the whole way along he did everything we asked him to; he was exemplary. I just wish we had more Aarons in the industry.<\/p>\n

“Students that work in larger places sometimes tend to get put to one side but, in a small-to-medium place like this, Aaron was an integral part of production.\u00a0\u00a0Sometimes we had to reschedule our visits because Aaron was too busy in key production work and couldn\u2019t be taken offline.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aaron says the digital Screen Truepress is relatively easy for him to run.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can turn a computer off and on, you\u2019ll be able to run this,\u201d he says. \u201cThe printing side of it, that\u2019s where the real learning curve was for me. I had no idea about printing when I started. I thought, you put it on a piece of paper and there it is. I had no idea. The Truepress is easy to run but you definitely need to have a good eye for detail.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continues: \u201cWe run all sorts of jobs on it, bottle labels, things for magazines, food companies, it could be for CDs, so there\u2019s a wide range of different kinds of stickers and labels that we make.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s looking to the future with a positive outlook and is full of optimism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no point in making life harder than it already is,\u201d he says. \u201cThis job has definitely developed me into a man. I\u2019m only 28 and I\u2019ve got a life to live. I can\u2019t thank Mark and Deane and the team around me enough. It\u2019s great to have their support and they\u2019ve really opened up my eyes. I can\u2019t praise them enough, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a single man, no wife, no kids, Mum and Dad still live down in my childhood home. I live in Liverpool at the moment but I\u2019m building a house near Campbelltown. It\u2019s a big responsibility but you gotta do it. So, it\u2019s good. There\u2019s a silver lining in everything, I guess. You\u2019ve just got to be willing to look for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Digital Inkjet label press operator Aaron George, who runs the Screen Truepress Jet L350UV at Marrickville converter\u00a0DS Labels, has been awarded his\u00a0Certificate III in Printing\u00a0by Ultimo TAFE Instructor Rick Moore, despite being legally blind and hearing impaired. \u201cIt can be a challenge but only if you make it a challenge,\u201d says 28-year-old George, who remains…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[30,51,92],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-3654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-label-packaging","tag-labels-fr","tag-truepress-jet-l350uv-and-l350uvlm","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30980,"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions\/30980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3654"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.screeneurope.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=3654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}