It seems that all the talk about getting the unskilled into jobs never addresses the fundamental issue that is obvious to any business person with a requirement to sharply analyze all business investments for a reasonable rate of return.

Investing in the employment of a skilled or semi skilled professional or trades person can be easily justified as the input per person (salary, employment taxes, benefits, etc) can be more than offset by their output (salable widgets, services, new product development, etc). Whereas the the input per person of unskilled or untrained people far exceeds their output ability due to the governments minimum wages.

Simply put; the market value of the unskilled is lower than the minimum wage.

The result of this government mandated misalignment is business will find alternative ways to get the work done at a lower cost than hiring an unskilled worker either through automation of the unskilled jobs or outsourcing to a lower cost country or perhaps not even bothering to have the job performed anymore.

I personally know several people (now in their 40's and 50's) who left school at grade 10. At that time they foolishly believed they knew all they needed to know and would never have to learn another thing. They are all on and off the dole. Unable to hang onto the most mundane jobs and often being put off due to automation or the availability of a person more willing to learn new skills - to mold their skills to better fit todays job marketplace.

But, to reduce the minimum wage so that the unskilled worker is paid their worth or market value to the business rather than what the government believes they are worth would also require substantial reductions in the dole. These changes are totally unpalatable to any government.

Therefore the government of the day takes a different tack hoping that by spending enough money the older, unskilled and marginally trainable will be lost in the dust of the "education revolution" and no one will remember them in several years when the results should be available.

I dont agree at all Peter.

As an employer, you can throw whatever you want at me but the end of the day if someone is unskilled then they are only suited to certain roles, and there are becoming less and less of these roles every day as the new age dawns.

Our countries economy has developed so there are less and less mindless jobs where any dogs body can do it. Now we all go to year 12, soon we will all be going past that to tertiary education, we will end up 25 before we hit the real world in the next 20 years.

These people who are unskilled made a choice that they were not going to be qualified in anything for whatever reason, and this is a reflection that they never had the grasp of how important this is to your life.

Forget circumstances, this does not wash we have all been there.

We need to train these people rather than try to entice employers to dumb down their workforce. Your only as strong as your weakest person, and there is little real long term opportunity for the unskilled as they drift from one dead end job to the rest if we entice employers to stick a few on the books and cop the incentives.

These people might fail at rocket science, physics or chemistry, but if we made it a requirement that they entered a minimum 12 month post school training, intergated with work experience in a field they had an interest in, This would at least give them a footing.

I dont believe that the deeper you dive, you are scaping the bottom of the intelligence barrell. it is just that most people have different natural abilities and skillsets. I may be deemed intellectual but i am hopeless with a hammer, just as they may have their own abilities.

I agree, with some reservations, to Peter's argument. I also believe that the majority of low-skilled, low-aptitude people can learn - it may take longer and more patience. I notice for example several very vigorous people gathering and pushing supermarket trolleys into home bays. Some may be very bright and very able for all I know, but I suspect that the ones who stick at it for long have not much more to offer than their strength and ability to recognise when the trolleys out there exceed the trolleys in the in bays. These guys have persistence and application that could probably be trained up into, for them, more satisfying and remunerative occupations. What we need is a training system that optimalises potentials. There might be a bigger payoff for the economy in getting a low-ability person trained up to becoming a production-line operative than in getting a higher-level performer to advance an extra notch. I agree wholeheartedly with Peter that training efforts need to be directed wisely, but not that this necessarily excludes the lowest levels of contributors.

There was a time when I took serious note of the opinions of Peter Saunders. Unfortunately his more recent articles have been very disappointing.
Colourful language and political bias are beginning to dominate rather than scholarly discernment.

“Education and training are what Americans call “motherhood and apple pie” issues.”
Which Americans is Peter citing?!? Just adopting and giving credence to such slang diminishes the value of his input!

The article once again discusses unskilled workers as an economic commodity and not as human beings who need and seek self worth and an opportunity to contribute to society. Being unskilled is not necessarily something that people have chosen. We are all unique individuals with a variety of talents and abilities. It has been the excessively economic orientation of the previous government and its so-called expert commentators that dismisses a certain percentage of these unique persons as being unemployable, no matter how ‘good’ and ‘communal’ they may be .

“...... the answer lies in policies to encourage employers to take on more unskilled workers. That, however, might involve sacrificing some sacred Labor IR cows.”

It may well be said that it is not a issue or problem of “sacred Labor cows”, but rather a matter of getting out of an 11 year regime of Liberal oppression of the unskilled workers . The statistics relating to the “working poor” testify to that.

Peter, I was with you until the second last sentence, then you lost me. The first couple of posts gave the reasons why. At the end of the day there is only going to be a limited number of trolley pushers. If you want to give these people some sort of gainful employment at a reasonable wage, then the government is going to be required to pay a subsidy to employers. Today's employer has enough calls on his resources what with superanuation etc. etc.

David

What a miserable pessimistic world outlook Peter Saunders and the CIS expects the rest of us all to adopt: It's much too difficult and expensive to train all those older unskilled workers so that they can achieve better paid more stimulating occupations - trust me - so we will expect them to work for the rest of their lives in menial low-paid jobs, and if they can't find work, just cut their already inadequate minimum wage.

That's the clear meaning meant to be conveyed Saunders' words:

If they really want to help lower ability people get jobs, the
answer lies in policies to encourage employers to take on more
unskilled workers. That, however, might involve sacrificing
some sacred Labor IR cows.

Perhaps we should question why, after at least three decades of economic 'reforms' inspired by think tanks like the CIS, that this society can't find dignified fulfilling roles for many of its members.

As I pointed out on another forum ("They're not really that poor" also by Peter Saunders at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6576#100775) those wealthy corporations who make tax-exempt donations to the CIS do so that the CIS can go on propagating ideas which serve their interests at the expense of everyone else.

A good brief summary of the insidious influence of right wing think tanks such as the CIS since 1947 can be found in George Monbiot's article "How did we get into this mess?" of 28 August 2007 at http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/08/28/how-did-we-get-into-this-mess/

For a more detailed study of their role since at least the 1970's read Naomi Klein's brilliant, yet alarming, "The Shock Doctrine" (2007) p444 http://www.naomiklein.com/ShockDoctrine RRP $32.95 http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/2204.)