Apprentices – some of whom earn less than $6.40 an hour – should get a pay rise as part of a desperately-needed overhaul of the sector, the Skills Minister, Chris Evans, said yesterday.
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Senator Evans told the National Press Club the existing apprenticeship scheme was "a mess", and that lifting the wages of apprenticeships should be a key part of fixing that mess.
"This is an area in desperate need of reform and the wages case is one part of it," he said.
His comments came a week after the Australian Council of Trade Unions launched a bid at Fair Work Australia to raise the wages of more than 200,000 apprentices to the minimum wage in their industry.
The ACTU says Fair Work Australia, which is reviewing modern award wages, should make low apprenticeship wages a priority in any look at the wage system.
It says some apprentices are struggling on wages of less than $6.35 an hour – less than the Newstart allowance – while the sector struggles to attract new talent. It is estimated the resource sector alone will need an extra 36,000 workers by 2015.
“Such low wages are a key reason given by apprentices for the increasingly high drop-out rate, but they are also a major disincentive for even taking up an apprenticeship in the first place," the ACTU president, Ged Kearney, said.
Fair Work Australia will take submissions to its Modern Awards Review until Friday.
Director of employment, education and training, Jenny Lambert, said the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry was concerned about the effects any wage claim would have on business interests.
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