Liam O’Brien: Australia is bleeding apprentices, it’s time we paid them more

Writing in The West on Monday, Aaron Morey laid out the fact-free arguments that employer groups lean into when demanding concessions and subsidies from taxpayers so that bosses can “fix” Australia’s skilled trades shortage.

Morey wants to double down on a failed solution. In calling for increased employer incentives for bosses hiring apprentices, he ignores the fact that 70 per cent of current or prospective apprentice employers already receive an apprenticeship incentive, as reported by a survey from the Australian Industry Group.

Clearly, incentives are not the answer to a shortage of apprentices. In fact, the recent strategic review of the Australian Apprenticeship Incentive System found that apprentice incentives often make little impact on hiring decisions by bosses and your boss being paid obviously doesn’t incentivise apprentices themselves to do anything.

We do need to urgently increase apprenticeship starts, but first we must address the poor completion rate. Australia loses nearly 50 per cent of its apprentices, 80 per cent of the time because the apprentices decide to walk away.

For as long as we lose so many apprentices each year, it would be a waste of time and money to increase new starters, without first addressing the leaky bucket in taking action to keep young people in apprenticeships and help them to get over the finish line.

Low pay is the biggest barrier to commencement and completion rates. The strategic review found that low rates of apprentice pay discouraged people from signing up for an apprenticeship and resulted in many leaving apprenticeships early in search of higher paying jobs.

Low overall rates of pay and wage discounting, through junior pay rates, often force apprentices to choose between the long-term gain of a career or the need to earn more money now in other entry-level work that pays significantly more.

The fact that so many young people choose the short-term earnings route out of necessity leaves them — and the nation — a lot poorer in the longer term. If bosses were serious about fixing this issue, they would back increased apprentice pay and abolish junior rates for all apprentices.

Bosses also need to hold up a mirror to examine their own leadership in the workplace. While many employers take their responsibility seriously, we know that many apprentices receive sub-par — or even non-existent supervision and training while on the job. Apprentice roundtables, held as part of the strategic review, heard apprentices report that they didn’t receive proper training, were asked to carry out unrelated tasks as cheap labour, and worked with limited, or even no supervision, amid high rates of exploitation and mistreatment.

Instead of asking for hand-outs, employers should take more seriously their responsibility to supervise apprentices and provide a quality learning and working environment.

The hundreds of millions of taxpayer money that goes to funding support for apprentices, provided by Apprentice Connect Australia, is often poor and fails to provide apprentices with much-needed workplace and pastoral support. This system needs a radical overhaul.

Employers do have a role to play and it’s great that they are starting to realise their responsibility for training our future workforce. The problem is while every employer wants access to a skilled workforce, most of them want someone else to provide the actual training opportunities and to foot the bill.

Aaron Morey’s realisation that there are no apprenticeships without employers will be a dim light bulb moment if his members don’t also consider their own role in providing better apprenticeship opportunities before simply demanding more taxpayer concessions.

Liam O’Brien is the assistant secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.