VET
Temporary skilled migration has always acted as a“ shock absorber” for the Australian labour market, contributing in the peaks and closing down in the troughs.
benefits of temporary 457 visa workers, I have been unable to stop myself exploring the question of what this all means to the Australian VET sector.
Our study has focused specifically on the experiences of skilled workers on 457 visas but the data suggests that there are several reasons why our labour market may continue to need such an external skilled pathway alongside our local investment in training and relocation. The Australian labour market at this time is especially skewed towards the resources sector and this will continue for some time.
The nature of the industry and the increasing attractiveness of previously distant and uneconomic resource locations places high demands for skilled labour in rural and remote working environments. It appears that at any one time that there is only a certain percentage of the skilled labour market who are prepared to move their home to, or spend long periods in, isolated situations.
There may be even fewer who would be prepared to adapt to the new social and family stress that a long-term association with such work patterns would generate. Indeed I will not even venture into the adjacent territory about the value of such work arrangements for ongoing personal and social wellbeing.
In short, there will be times, as is the current situation, in this vast continent when the start-up demands of resources projects require more skilled workers than are immediately available. In addition, even with a significant increase in the training and skilling of the prospective employees generated locally, there will only ever be a smaller group who will willingly take up remotely located work, and an even smaller group who will be able to maintain such employment as a lifestyle choice.
There is little evidence from our study that the 457 visa temporary work program in WA is displacing local skilled workers. Indeed, the statistics indicate a historical pattern of skilled migration to WA outpacing skilled interstate skilled migration to WA by about 5:1 and at the core of the past two decades of the economic growth pattern.
So where does this leave us? Modern Australia is a country built though skilled migration, and is likely to continue to be so. As we are well aware training and re-training programs have long lead times, due to their own infrastructure demands. Indeed our own state structure may continue to reinforce a parochicial vocational training perspective when what we are experiencing is evidently a national skilled labour realignment.
How many people recognise that by tonnage Port Hedland is now the largest port in Australia and that the combined populations of WA and Queensland are slowly creeping up to that of NSW?
These changes in the labour market appear to be creating a number of tensions. Training and retraining programs are often frustrated by the difficulty of attracting potential participants to manual work when they are surrounded by a knowledge economy. Skilled training completions are eroded as trainees are lured away in a growing economy to related higher paid local jobs. Local skilled workers may often lack the work tested and ready capability needed for remote working locations. Finally, trained workers may find that the work they have trained for is located far away and requires them to adopt a very different lifestyle.
Living in a continent where the population still clings to the shorelines perhaps there is need to recognise that we can skill people for job opportunities, but that an empathy with the industry culture is what will secure a long-term employment relationship for Australian workers.
My point is that it is imperative to ensure that skilling and especially re-training are closely linked with learning about the associated employment realities and social cultures. We may have very different views on the realities of such social changes and their impact on employee welfare and opportunity.
However, my reflections, as our current project draws to a close, is that we will need to link training and retraining even more closely to the eventual workplace realities of employment. Not just to the social culture, but to the possible locations of work.
Training has historically been linked to servicing local industries. That pattern is rapidly changing. Increasingly the Australian labour market is nationwide and may involve very different working patterns. In such a situation, learning about these realities would appear to be almost as important as acquiring the skills that are required. ■
Associate Professor Llandis Barratt-Pugh is with the school of management at Edith Cowan University. Dr Sue Bahn and Dr Gially Yap were co-researchers in the recent 457 visa study.
www. campusreview. com. au February 2013 | 35