`lost Youth' May Be In For A Future Shock
SUNDAY AGE
Saturday June 27, 1992
THERE are fewer school-leavers starting apprenticeships in Victoria than at any time in 50 years. In the past two years alone, the number of first-year apprentices in this state has more than halved.
The 15-year-old apprentice, who goes straight from school into a full-time career in a chosen trade, is a vanishing species ... and vanishing fast.
The problem for 52,000 Victorian teenagers currently engaged in a soul-destroying and futile search for jobs is that nobody has come up with much of a substitute for finding ways into the workforce.
State Training Board figures show that building apprenticeships fell to 1166 from almost 5000 in 1989. There were only 790 apprentice electricians this year compared with 2000 three years ago.
In 1989, the Richmond TAFE college enrolled 70 first-year apprentice sheet metal workers. In subsequent years, the numbers slumped to 60, then to 32 and, this year, to only 15. In Melbourne's western suburbs, only five apprentices were given a start this year as sheet metal workers, three of them at the one factory in Spotswood.
The shrivelling of the apprentice system accounts for as much as a quarter of the youth unemployment in this state. Partly, it is a function of the recession: businesses fighting grimly to survive cannot afford the luxuries of time and money to train teenagers in trade skills.
But many of these jobs have gone, never to return.
In 1969, more than 25,000 young Victorians had their first day at work courtesy of the apprenticeship system. This year, it was just over 7000.
Unskilled teenagers now find themselves tossed about in the cross-currents of dramatic changes which the veteran trade unionist, Laurie Carmichael _ author of a landmark report on youth training _ has compared in scale to the Industrial Revolution.
It is something akin to the phenomenon Alvin Toffler described in his book, `Future Shock': a community struggling to adjust to the pace of change in the structure and character of industry and the labor force.
The young are not the only ones to carry the burden of these changes. Older male workers in the 55-plus age bracket have been just as much the victims of the growth in unemployment in the past two years.
The ratio of people in the under-20 age group in full-time employment has fallen from 56per cent since 1970 to about 20per cent today.
For males aged 60-64, the statistics show a similar pattern. Only 36per cent of this group are now in full-time employment, compared with 70per cent at the start of the 1970s.
In fact, there were more unemployed teenagers during the previous recession in 1983 than today. But crucial differences exist between now and then.
One is that many more students are staying on through years 11 and 12, or entering TAFE courses out of fear of attempting to enter the workforce.
More significantly still, Australia in the decade since 1983 has been undertaking unprecedented industry reform, which has seen the rundown of its labor-intensive manufacturing base, the shedding of significant jobs through rationalisation, and the growth of service industries.
Major employers like the car manufacturers, the former State Bank of Victoria, and the public authorities _ which ran vast recruitment programs to absorb thousands of school leavers _ are cutting, rather than bolstering, their workforce numbers. Not just to tough out the current hard times, but to lay the groundwork for their long-term survival and profitability.
For these reasons, governments, employers, and welfare workers all know _ and fear _ that when the economy finally bounces back, there won't necessarily be a surge in opportunities for teenage job-seekers.
As companies are forced to rebuild and modernise, and with the services sector taking up an ever-increasing share of the economy, the demand is for workers who can hit the ground running. Maturity and competence are the catch-phrases governing recruitment in the 1990s.
Recession or no recession, early school leavers will struggle to find a place in the more sophisticated workplace of the 21st Century.
``It is clear that full-time opportunities for 15, 16 and 17-year-olds have gone and you cannot artificially create them. That is why we argue that the push to retain them in education is so important," John Freland, of the Australian Council of Social Services, told `The Sunday Age'.
Australians will witness a succession of summits in the coming weeks devoted to the theme of what can be done to salvage this ``lost generation" of young unemployed.
Youth unemployment has become flavor-of-the-month for policy-makers, business and union leaders.
Given the problems are worst in Victoria _ at last count, more than 52,000 people under 20 were out of work _ it was not surprising the Premier, Mrs Joan Kirner, got in first with her own seminar this week.
The Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry is in the midst of a major survey of 50,000 businesses in Victoria to establish why young people are not hired in the numbers they once were.
``By far the largest number gave the reason as inadequate skills training and education," said David Edwards, chief executive of VECCI.
``That means that even if we get the economic policies right, it is unlikely to create a lot of jobs for 15 to 19-year-olds," he said.
Employers spoken to by `The Sunday Age' raised the following as key reasons why young workers are seen as less viable: Less skilled and less experienced than adults, without the confidence and maturity to deal competently with customers or clients.
Less productive, imposing increased demands for additional training.
Cost to society. When adults with acquired skills are lost to the workforce, the financial cost to the community is higher. Moreover, younger people have fewer family income demands.
However, these views are not shared by Charles Spiteri, last year's State Training Board employer of the year.
Mr Spiteri runs Able Industries at Spotswood, an atypical employer in that 10 of its workforce of 70 are apprentices. He was one of the declining number of Victorian businesses to take on apprentices this year.
``Most of my employees have come through as apprentices. They have been trained up over the last 17 years. The kids are the future of this place," he said.
Mr Spiteri resents what he describes as the defeatist solution of simply ``warehousing" teenagers in schools.
``There is no short-term answer. But we can employ youth a lot better than we do at present. It would help if they were already learning skills so that when they go into industry they are not a cost burden." Opinions on exactly how to achieve this aim differ markedly between small and big business, unions, governments and the welfare lobby. The one area of agreement appears to be that the existing systems are having limited success.
Mr Edwards said the traditional methods of training young workers were far too rigid, and did not take into account the diversity of requirements of small business employers, especially in the services sector.
He said political leaders had again come too late to the argument. ``It may take us a generation to sort it out," he said.
© 1992 SUNDAY AGE