Time to develop our own talent to fill the key jobs

SKILLS SHORTAGE: Sarah-Jane Tasker and Annabel Hepworth From: The Australian December 09, 2010 12:00AM
AUSTRALIAN companies concerned about skilled labour shortages should focus on training local staff.
They should not be campaigning for changes to migrant visas, which has been described as an "unsustainable" strategy.
The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union has called on local companies to focus on training and upskilling the national talent pool to address the critical labour issue instead of finding overseas workers.
"Every time this issue comes up we have employers saying 'we have to loosen red tape and deregulate' to make sure all these major resource projects and nation building initiatives are able to supply labour," national secretary Peter Tighe said. "We understand skilled migration has to take place and it is a mechanism to address skills shortages, when there (are) cyclical trends, but our view is you should grow your own at home."
Australia's resources sector is riding the wave of China's increasing demand but the country's biggest companies are concerned that multi-billion-dollar projects will face major delays or cost blowouts if the skills shortage issue is not addressed urgently by the government.
Key industry figures, including Rio Tinto iron ore boss Sam Walsh and Leighton Holdings chief executive Wal King have called for the government to make the 457 visa -- the most commonly used program for bringing in overseas workers on a temporary basis -- to be expanded and made more flexible.
Mr Tighe said that despite industry concerns, the union had not seen evidence of employers "putting their shoulders to the wheel" in relation to taking on trainees. "Also, we have not seen them do anything else other than bleat about the problem and argue you should loosen the arrangements to bring in people from overseas," he said.
"We don't believe skilled migrants should be the source of Australian skilled labour."
Mr Tighe's comments came as a new high-level report warned that Australia's reliance on skilled migrants and international students was an "unsustainable" strategy.The report by the Australian National Engineering Taskforce found that about 60 per cent of newly qualified engineers were skilled migrants (compared with 40 per cent five years ago) with the number of engineers working in Australia on section 457 visas more than tripling since 2003-04. "Recruitment of international students and workers should not replace wholesale investment in local skills development and in the development of the profession in Australia," the report said.
The taskforce found a mismatch between the number of engineering graduates and industry needs, adding to pressures on businesses to recruit offshore. While there are about 6000 engineering graduates yearly, up to 4000 extra engineers will be needed in the roads sector alone in the next eight years. But engineers are in short supply globally.
One concern is that the resources sector is draining engineering skills, having a knock-on effect in other sectors such as roads and rail. The taskforce warned that skills shortages were adding to the problems of poor scoping on big projects.
The latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, also released yesterday, also pointed to the hiring surge expected in the services and mining and construction sector next year.
Employers in the services sector are showing the highest employment optimism for the first quarter of next year, at a seasonally adjusted 28 per cent, up from 27 per cent in the same period last year. "We've heard a lot from mining and construction sector employers about skills shortages and these figures now serve to add more urgency to the need for a solution," said Lincoln Crawley, managing director of Manpower Australia & New Zealand. "Organisations need to prioritise attraction and retention strategies as the war for talent will heat up."
Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, has been addressing the skills shortage issue with a graduate program, with the aim to have 100 graduates in the next five years.
Lyle van der Veer, national support and training manager at Schneider, said they had formed alliances with universities. "The idea is to get students job-ready during their degree process because a lot of the problem is when they come into our business, there is still a minimum of 12 to 18 months before they're useful onsite," he said.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/time-to-develop-our-own-talent-to-fill-the-key-jobs/story-e6frg8zx-1225967885831