Yesterday I ripped apart the latest iteration of the Turnbull Government’s $750 million Youth-Jobs PaTH program – to prepare, trial and ultimately hire young Australians – after it was revealed that the Australian Hotels Association has agreed to take 10,000 internships over the next four years:
Consider PaTH from an employers perspective. They will get a free kick as the Government is not only the one paying the intern, but the employer also receives $1,000 up front for employing the intern without the need to worry about sick days, annual leave or penalty rates. Then if the intern is offered a job, the employer receives another payment of $6500 or $10,000 from taxpayers!
Why would an employer hire a young worker on a casual basis when they can effectively get paid to take on an intern?
It seems I am far from alone in scalding this program, with Osman Faruqi penning the following scathing rebuke in BuzzFeed:
In order to accelerate the [PaTH] program the government has today announced a deal with the Australian Hotels Association that will create 10,000 internships for young people in… pubs and clubs.
Yep, the government will be paying young people as little $4 an hour to pull beers (and maybe other stuff? But probably mainly pouring drinks). In addition to paying interns extremely low wages, the government will also give every pub that signs up $1,000 for every intern they take on.
I gotta say… this sounds like an extremely good deal for the pubs and an extremely shit deal for young people trying to find a job. Why would a pub or club hire a worker on a real salary when they can get youth labour for free from the government?…
Sure, there’s lots of things you can learn through working in a pub but up until now there’s been an expectation that those are on the job skills you develop while you’re being paid.
Now the government is basically handing over 10,000 free workers to the hospitality industry…
The Australian Council of Trade Unions is pretty livid with the deal, with secretary Sally McManus saying “This program is gifting young people to businesses, destroying jobs and not giving a single young person a useful skill or recognised qualification”.
“Prime Minister Turnbull and [employment minister Michaelia] Cash are selling young people’s futures out from under them to shore up the votes of the business community,” she said.
Very well said. The evidence on these types of programs shows that employers will generally substitute a worker receiving a wage subsidy for another worker who would otherwise have been hired.
Thus, PaTH is unlikely to generate extra employment and merely represents another free gift to corporate Australia courtesy of the taxpayer.
