More than half a century ago Australia had a class divide. The children of wealthy parents went on to university and then entered the professions. The children of the less affluent left school much earlier and became indentured to a tradesman to learn a trade. The professions bestowed a higher standing and tended to look down on the lower paid " Tradies ".
Apprenticeships had benefits for both the craftsman and the apprentice. The starting age was usually fourteen or fifteen, hence the apprentice still lived at home with his family. Wages were low because the work contribution was unskilled in the early years and many craftsmen considered training the young a contribution to society rather than bringing financial gain. It was expected that the apprentice would study the academic aspect of the trade by attending night courses - in their own time - at the Technical Colleges of that era.
We live in a changing world and apprentice wages have not kept pace with those changing times. The commencement of apprenticeships now takes place at a later age and involves both genders - and many entering the trades do so with family responsibilities, including funding a mortgage and sending kids to school. We are seeing an increasing failure to complete the course. This drop out rate is purely on financial grounds. Many can not maintain their financial commitments on a rate of just $ 7.60 an hour when even unskilled jobs such as flipping burgers pay $ 11 an hour.
In 1996 just 8.4% of apprentices were older than 25. By 2006 this had jumped to 26.1%. The wage structure was still stalled on the parameters of an earlier age. Now there are pressures from the ACTU to lift apprentice wages to sustainable levels, but this will bring huge problems for their employers.
The very nature of apprenticeships has changed. Technology has replaced pure manual skills and as a consequence, many trades now require the apprentice to attend TAFE for at least two days per week - at the employers expense. Not only does the employer lose the apprentice's contribution to the work flow, a higher wage would increase job costs and flow on to the end customer. A tradesman who did not train apprentices would have a huge cost advantage in the marketplace.
The mix of trades and professions has also undergone change. Now it is the " Tradies " who are earning the big money and in many cases they are in short supply, further pushing up prices. At the same time, those with university qualifications are finding it hard to gain employment in their chosen field. The advantages between these two life skills is becoming blurred.
Most agree that the present apprentice wage structure is unsustainable. Obviously the unions will try and push higher wages on the employer and ignore the consequent drop in placements offering. Ultimately, it will be a government decision on how this problem is to be tackled.
There are two options offering. If the tax regimen was restructured to reward employers who take on apprentices this could compensate for a higher wage structure, but it would come at a cost to government revenue.
The other option would be to extend the HECS scheme that applies to university education to the trade structure. The government would need to subsidize a higher wage by reimbursing the difference to the employer with the apprentice required to repay that cost when earnings from the acquired qualifications reached an agreed level.
This second option seems inevitable. The principle of clawing back higher education costs is already in place and generally accepted. To bring apprenticeship earnings to a living wage and asking those with qualifications earned to share the cost is simply a fair sharing of equality across all employment skill gaining options..
Few could argue with an equality measure !
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