Implementation - Growing the potential workforce by attracting people from different backgrounds
Address given by Pru Goward
Sex Discrimination Commissioner and Commissioner responsible for Age Discrimination
Resources & Infrastructure Industry Skills Council (RIISC)2nd National Conference
Swissôtel, Market Street, Sydney
23rd August 2006
Thank you for including me in your conference today.
The shortage of skilled workers is one of Australia's most pressing economic issues. The reasons would be familiar to all of you so suffice it to say that a combination of the mining boom, the house renovations boom, economic growth in general and the expansion of our cities have all contributed to the demand for skilled blue collar workers. The reason we are all here this morning is to explore ways of addressing that shortage.
Of course
very rarely do problems emerge overnight. This particular shortage began some
time ago, driven not just by the decline in manufacturing 20 years ago when
skilled tradesmen exited the sector and apprenticeships dried up as employers
became increasingly reluctant to carry the costs of apprentices through the hard
times. All this of happened just as the IT industry began to explode,
universities to expand. Along with the growth of office and other knowledge
service work and a general decline in the status of blue collar
work.
And perhaps that's the
first point - that the term blue collar worker, conjuring as it does the burly
bloke in blue overalls clearing the blocked drains or sweating it out as a
boiler maker in a heavy engineering factory- has never been attractive to the
upwardly mobile. What's more, it no longer accurately describes what
skilled trades people do. Sadly the marketing of these trades hasn't
caught up with this. As my local mechanic, Stan, says (you're going to
hear a lot about my local mechanic, electrician and panel beater's
opinions) "these days you can service a car in a dinner
suit"!
Precision engineering and modern technology have changed the skills and theoretical knowledge required in almost every trade, including beauty therapy and hairdressing. So have the increasing pressures of litigation, occupational health and safety regulation and a growing awareness of consumer rights. You'd think that would attract your Year 12 graduates back into these lucrative and interesting professions. But clearly, there's a bit to do.
I'll come back to marketing over and over in this address, but let's put it aside for a moment and return to the original premise of this conference, the need to attract more workers into these fields. Just how you encourage more firms to establish apprenticeships, when there are still memories of the 1980s down turn, is another aspect to this which I am sure will be well covered by the experts.
So let's look at the talent pool - where are you going to get your workers from?
It would be easy to begin by saying that the attraction of young men, your traditional source of worker, is not my area of expertise. Except for one thing - these young men, like the young women, are part of Generation Y - a highly mobile, ambitious generation, not strong on company loyalty and, by all accounts, pretty keen on leisure. With house prices conspiring to keep most of them out of the housing market until their parents either down size or drop off the twig, they have enormous disposable income and nothing like the domestic focus of earlier generations of young people. Designing training, marketing technical trades and designing jobs that suits this generation is a particular challenge for their bosses, the baby boomers, who, despite their hip image, are really the children of the Great Depression and consequently extraordinarily work and acquisition focussed. This generation of men and women have more in common than previous generations may have done, because economic self-sufficiency is now an accepted life goal for women as well as men.
But having said that, you would never guess it from the occupational breakdowns. The Australian workforce is highly gender segregated. Men in blue collar work, women in retail, hospitality and white collar work. Only 3% of women work in the trades and they make up only 10% of trade and related workers. If it weren't for hairdressing and beauty therapists, that figure would be miniscule.
Sixty thousand young men
began trade apprentices in 2004, 10,000 young women. There were 7,790 males
doing a mechanical or fabrication trades course, 150 women. There were 10,210
males doing automotive apprenticeships, 270 females. You must be getting the
picture.
For the top 20 training
packages, which include retail, business services, hospitality, automotive and
construction, women made up about 40% of the total, mainly because of those
hospitality, business and retail training
courses.
Now it might be that women
don't pursue these options because they don't get the same wage
premiums as men. According to National Training Authority (ANTA) figures,
it's only in diploma or university degrees that women enjoy the same wage
premium over year 11 or less education as men do. For example, both men and
women with degrees enjoy a 40% premium over those with year 11 or less. In
trades, the female premium is about half that of men - women tradespeople enjoy
a premium of 7% over Year 11s whereas male tradespeople enjoy 13%.
You'd think the price signals
might be starting at work - intermediate production and tradespersons
enjoyed 4.8% rises to June 2006, compared with accommodation; hospitality and
retail on about 3.4%.
But ANTA and a great deal of anecdotal information suggests that women, such a great source of tradespeople, fail to take up these options for a range of reasons. Employers cannot always be blamed. As the CEO of a major trucking company said to me, they try to get female truck drivers whenever they can - the modern hydraulics means there is no longer the need for great physical strength and in his words, "women drive more carefully, have fewer accidents and maintain their trucks better". Mining companies say the same thing. My local mechanic and panel beater have both been happy to take female apprentices, believing they will cope better with the study and theoretical work as well as having greater dexterity. I am not sure how much of that is assumption and how much can be proved, but their reasons for NOT taking on young women were instructive - one man said he didn't know how to do it without a women's toilet (yet he had a female office manager) and the other said the work was physically too demanding. When we yarned on for a bit longer, I think it was about something much more troubling and subterranean - they weren't confident they could protect a single and presumably YOUNG woman in an all male workforce with its male behaviours, tea room talk and so on. They were well aware of sexual harassment and discrimination law and I think it put them off. They just didn't want the trouble.
Now in the next few years, these small businesses might well be forced to take on women because of the shortage of suitable young men, and they will have to start developing management systems and staff relations that accommodate the needs of women and protect and respect their rights at work. I have never seen, in any research reference, mention of paid maternity leave or other family friendly workforce demands as a reason why women are not employed in the local service station workshop. Employers are so desperate to attract people into their industries, these conditions are taken for granted.
Let me quote from a recent
report on women in vocational education and training, The Way Forward: The
Importance of VET to Australian Women in Poverty published by Security4Women February 2006.
The report finds there has been little improvement in the spread of women across
different fields of study in the Vocational Education and Training system (VET).
Women and girls choose from only a small range of occupations and their
decisions are made early on and are difficult to change. It is their perception
of industries and jobs and the lifestyle that comes with these that cause them
to choose so narrowly in their VET courses. The distrust for equitable outcomes
for women in, and from, VET is still warranted as an employed woman's
earnings, after completing a VET course, are still less than that of a male.
Women are less likely to be employed full-time and have less employment and
income upon completion of VET
courses.
The study found that
women generally choose to study subjects such as business, administration,
economics, health and community services, whereas men are more likely to choose
areas such as engineering, surveying and land and marine resources. Both genders
participate in services, hospitality, transportation and multi-field education
in the same proportions. Women were found to hold negative attitudes towards
trades and male-dominated areas such as science and technology and some studies
found that women did not want to study these areas because it was not in keeping
with their female identity.
It
was suggested that the quality of information and advice on education and
training received by women is poor. They are most likely to be encouraged
towards academic study regardless of their situation. Such long-term study plans
may well be impractical for women in poverty who can often not afford the
'luxury' of university education, and, in the short-term and perhaps
as a 'pathway' option, may benefit more by pursuing training and
skills development to gain employment. Furthermore, people advising on careers
for girls and women, including parents, teachers and careers advisors, continue
to direct them towards a narrow range of jobs, usually in highly-feminised
industries, and often with inadequate knowledge. The information provided to
women is not representative of the entire range of occupations and associated
education and training opportunities on offer, nor the pathways that can be
followed. This makes for poor choices in pathways to employment, and thus
earnings and advancement
potential.
One of the
nationally agreed objectives of the vocational education and training (VET)
system is to achieve equitable outcomes for disadvantaged groups, including
women.
From 2001 to mid-2003, an extensive research and consultation process was undertaken to work out how to improve results for women from training linked to employment.
In June 2003, Australian,
state and territory ministers for VET agreed to women's issues being addressed
in an ongoing fashion through annual VET planning and reporting processes. To
achieve this, it was agreed that a 'supporting framework' was needed
for states and territories to work in, and report against, that was consistent
with national directions for VET.
A recent report by the
Department of Education, Science and Training,
( The National Industry
Skills Report, May
2006) highlighted that in order to increase the
labour pool available, there is a need for greater workforce diversity,
particularly in industries and occupations where the female participation rate
is low. They cite in particular the energy utilities sector, with a low
representation of women making up only 25% of the workforce and the ICT, and
agrifood industries which also have a low female participation
rate.
Well we all know that last bit,
as I said in the beginning, that's why we're all here. But let me
tell you what this means in
reality.
It means the daughter who
comes home from school and says she'd like to be an electrician or a
plumber is told by her parents that it's no job for a lady, she'll
get a hard time from the blokes and it's not nice work. If her father is
a tradesman he will either take her on himself, or is equally likely not to take
her on because his professional associates tell him his daughter will have a
terrible time. I once spoke to a group of female electrical apprentices who
loved what they did, said how against it their families were and then, sadly,
found themselves without work once they were through, even though they did well
in their course work, because bosses were uncomfortable about taking them
on.
I could tell these stories
endlessly and they would just confirm the ANTA
research.
Now let me come at it from a different angle. Let me tell you about a group I've had a bit to do with over the years - women in construction. I once spoke to them about the need to address sexual harassment. I was a bit green then and hadn't thought too much about the figures that show harassment is very common in industries with large gender imbalances, of which construction is obviously one. These were accountants, lawyers, engineers and surveyors with construction firms.
It took them a while to start talking about it. It turns out harassment is so common in their industry they never discuss it. So common in their industry they never go on a construction site unless they're wearing trousers, many refused to wear makeup, they didn't discuss their personal lives, nor let on whether or not they were married. They shrink themselves as women to avoid being a target of any sort.
It is my guess, but I think an
educated guess, that this is the problem with the trades in Australia. It is
not the work, not the skills required. It does reflect levels of interest -
women may be genuinely more interested in caring for children than prisoners for
example, more interested in health technology than fixing cars. But I think it
also reflects the cultures of traditionally male professions and their
impregnability. In particular, the difficulty people in charge of these
professions and trades have in changing those cultures or even considering that
things could be different.
We are not
alone of course- Sweden, for all its gender equality, has almost 100% male
mechanics and fitters.
So what can
you do about it?
Under the Sex
Discrimination Act, special measures are permitted to allow the over-coming of
historical disadvantage. That is why, in the past, special scholarships for
girls in engineering have been approved by my predecessors, but not by me. I
have not seen paying women more, or giving them a particular financial
advantage, as the way to get more women into engineering. In my view it is a
cultural problem that needs a cultural solution and money is not a part of it.
I have always wondered why special scholarships - really such token measures,
were ever believed to change
anything.
That was also my view when it came to the challenge of attracting more boys into teaching. My understanding was that the reason boys did not want to teach had nothing to do with the fees they had to pay and everything to do with the perceptions of male teachers, limited career paths, limited capacity to earn high salaries in later years and their own fears that they would be labelled as undesirables. This turned out, after talking to teacher groups throughout NSW, to be a particularly powerful concern for 17 year old boys. As I understand it, the CEO, which had initially asked to be able to offer male only teaching scholarships, but ended up offering equal numbers of male and female scholarships, has found that all the girl scholarships were taken up but only a handful of the boys. Bearing out my point precisely.
So I do not consider the way to get more female apprentices is to offer them special scholarships. Their male fellow apprentices would be incensed and understandably so. This would be considered a special measure and is a possible avenue under the legislation, but not one I would recommend. There are other intermediate steps, such as marketing to potential female apprentices, special career sessions for females AND their families and a whole lot of workplace design and conduct issues that could well be addressed first. More to the point, if employers do not start to do some of this (and they could do with some guidance and leadership) then not only will they struggle to meet the future demand for these skilled workers, I doubt that they will maintain their attractiveness to young men either.
We're well beyond the stage when I need to argue the diversity case to this audience - you increase the number of people in the selection pool, you increase your chances of selecting on merit. Diversity is now identified as a key tool in coping with change, adapting and benefiting from change. Women are part of that diversity.
And frankly I don't think this is the problem. The problem is culture. The problem is small businesses with modest human resource management skills knowing how to deal with the issues inevitably surrounding the first female apprentice in a workshop, or the first male apprentice.
If
Australia is to maintain its prosperity and productivity with a declining
fertility rate and ageing workforce, these issues have to be solved. The
solution, as always, starts with respect. Respect for fellow workers, for their
right to be there and their right to be
different.
It is not a matter
of whether or not the local mechanic can afford to do this - one day it will be
a matter of whether he, or she, can afford not
to.
Thank you.
