To see a different perspective, I suggest you visit regional areas employing backpackers.
Last year the federal government changed the rules to allow those with one year Work/Travel visas to extend for a second year in Australia if they completed 3 months work in specific regional areas where there was previously an acute labour shortage.
Now there is an oversupply of international backpackers competing against each other to get the jobs. Once they complete 3 months of backbreaking servitude they are eligible to move to urban areas where changes to the rules have also allowed them to work in any job for six months.
These changes please producers as they now have a supply of hard working people who will remain with them for the duration of the harvest.

Recently my local suburban newspaper asked whether welfare to work was working fairly and questioned the unemployment statistics of 5.1%. It noted that a person can be 'employed' for 1 hour per fortnight in paid or unpaid work. Unemployed people can't be studying and must be actively looking and ready to work this week. Commentators put the real unemployment rate higher with Henry Thornton estimating its really 15%. Roy Morgan, of pollster fame, said that while we persist in using unrealistic statistics we will not be able to formulate realistic policies.

When I was at school we were told about the disgraceful work practices on the waterfront in the 1930s. In the 1930s workers appeared for work at the start of the day and the foreman would walk through the men and select them “you, you and you” for a days work. If you weren’t hired you would return the next day. In Victoria in 2006 teachers would be ready for the classroom at 7:10 am waiting for the phone call from the labour hire company telling them what school they were working at that day. Or not. In term 3 teachers would get 3 – 4 days work a week but in term 4 they would be called 10 days in 10 weeks.

Recently advertisements appeared for 165 COBOL programmers to rewrite part of the Telstra billing system. The advertisement says that due to the number of applications they expect to process they can't possibly get back to unsuccessful candidates. This computer company \ will store the applications in a database but hasn't got the technology or the courtesy to spend time sending out acknowledgement or rejection letters. Each application would have taken an average of 8 hours to prepare and the candidates had to have the skill set, education and university education to bother submitting an application. To put this into context, no one accurately reports the employment rate of ICT graduates as they are counted as engineering, science or business graduates. In 2002 the employment rate for ICT graduates was less than 20%.

The UK film the Navigator by Ken Loach dramatised the familiar processes of globalisation which we in Victoria have seen applied to ourselves, friends and family.
The film depicts
• a large organisation being broken into smaller units,
• former colleagues finding themselves competing against colleagues in other units
• labour hire companies offer great contract rates
• the work is outsourced
• the work unit is forced to destroy equipment
• Labour hire companies employ casualised workers who are responsible for their own training, certification, equipment, sick, holiday and superannuation pay.
• Supervisors are forced to commit acts of bastardry to keep their jobs [just a little bit longer].
• Workers are rostered into work gangs that are short and forced into heavy lifting – the back injuries will shorten their working life.
• Workers who speak out find themselves blacklisted by labour hire companies.
• Work is done by unqualified [willing and ignorant] workers using outdated, slow and dangerous techniques to save money for the subcontractors.
• The inevitable happens, the unsafe work practices lead someone being seriously injured but the workers hide the real reason for the accident because they wanted more work.

So Ken Loach always directs gloomy movies you say, but unfortunately we see the same stuff happening here under the guise of privatisation and globalisation

While I am on about skanky work employment practices let me draw 2 more to your attention.

As you are all aware it’s mandatory for employers to deduct superannuation payments from your pay packet and pay them into the super fund of your choice. It takes the employer about 2 days effort to set up a payment into a new superfund for an employee so the reality is that contractors won’t hire low paid employees who want to specify their choice of super fund. If you are working 3 part time jobs you will have 3 seperate superannuation funds each taking out administration fees and compulsory life insurance.

Outsourcing in Australia has been taken to dizzy heights far beyond what is practised overseas. In the UK cleaners are outsourced but here in Australia professional jobs have been outsourced. Every 5 years the contract comes up for renewal and theoretically the client can select an entirely new outsourcer who will come in with 1500 experienced and skilled professionals who know your business and the changeover will occur without your customers being aware its happening. Yeah right! Even if your business is using uncustomised packages like SAP and MYOB its going to take an experienced professional 6 weeks to understand the intricacies of your business. How long does it take the auditors to check the businesses carefully prepared books each year – 6 weeks – so why should it take new ICT professionals any less time?

Which leads into a further distortion of employment figures. Every time the outsourcing contract is up for renewal 3 or 4 outsourcers bid for the work and place advertisements for staff they may need if they are awarded the contract. This inflates the job advertisement indices.

Whoa whatever gave runner the idea that I “want to be the victim” and that I am a “John Howard hater”! I merely set out the case that the government and by default, the opposition were misleading us. Runner seems to have reached the type of conclusion that would have been uate, and the job prospects for various trades and professions are reached by the KGB or the Gestapo, that messengers are to blame. In fact I deprecate the actions of all major parties on this matter not the people involved.

SCOTTY and billie’s estimate of a real unemployment rate of 15% percent is probably close to the mark. If we consider that the 40% of part time workers are on average employed for 50% of the time that adds 19% to the 5% making it 24%. If we consider the underemployment factor the rate probably lies somewhere between 15% and 24%. Robg mentioned another device used to reduce unemployment figures that is the “participation rate”. Many unemployed people are removed by reclassifying them as non-participants. Robg does make a good point about more women working now it is a pity however that because of economic exigencies most of these women work out of necessity and many are unemployed. Thirty years ago however most women were in full time unpaid employment.

This brings me to another interesting point there was a dip in the unemployment statistics in the mid sixties 2% down to 1% (approximately). I discovered that this was because at this time the Bureau of Statistics (ABS) took over the preparation of the unemployment figures bringing in the very loose definition of “employed”. Before that the figures were compiled by the trade unions. May I suggest that the unions are unlikely to underestimate unemployment figures?

brightspark have you also considered the large numbers [percentage] of nurses working casual shifts.

This leads to uncertainty of income for nurses, increased staffing budgets for hospitals and unreliable service for patients. I played with a lass who worked in a large private hospital who said that the shifts were always rostered lighht and they always hired casual nurses for each day. That staffing practice shows. The reputation of nurses employed by private hospitals is so bad that patients with private health insurance chose their local public hospital. The purchaser of highest price house in Toorak was the owner of a nurses agency. The local public hospital now avoids using agency nurses on its wards and the level of patient care is noticeably superior.

A nurse I know lamented that her imminent move from Sydney would lead to a lose of income because the agency she worked for paid a shift differential to her for her extra certificates and she knew her roster a fortnight in advance. Which highlights the fact that casual workers usually don't have their extra certificates recognised and they are not paid for having them either.

There is also an oversupply of professional engineers in Victoria but I don't know any details because the unemployed engineers are considered work shy or problematic. The problem is of course that Melbourne has lost its knowledge of the Melbourne geology so the Burnley Tunnel was not properly constructed and it leaks. Who knows who is maintaining our water, sewerage pipes, rail networks and electricity supply as these utilities have laid off their armies of professional engineers.

The underlying thrust of my argument is that the treatment of workers in a range of industries indicates that there is not a shortage of skilled workers, quite the contrary, that labour has been commodified and just in time management principles have been applied to make units of labour interchangeable. This weakens our social capital.

If you want take this further contact me through Graham Y