Electrical Trades Union (ETU) Media Release
The Liberal Party’s plan to scrap labor market testing for electricians will flood the Australian economy with foreign sparkies and slash wages, the ETU has warned.
Electricians nationwide are horrified by Dutton’s plan to decapitate the local workforce.
“Rather than training young Australians and allowing them to build a trade and a career path, Peter Dutton wants to slash the wages of electricians in a cost of living crisis,” said Michael Wright, ETU National Secretary. “This cheap and nasty plan will dilute the living standards of electricians by making them compete with foreign sparkies on short term visas who can not enforce their labour rights.
“Mr Dutton’s plan to cut electricians’ wages is clear from his rhetoric. He has complained about the cost of trades because he wants to slash living standards. If he thinks electricians are paid too much, he should just come out and say so.
“The ETU is issuing an open invitation to Mr Dutton. We will happily host you at any union worksite in the country. Come and outline to our members why you think bosses shouldn’t even have to try and hire locally. That is the reality of what he’s saying.”
The Liberal Party created a mess in office by trashing vocational education and training. Jobs & Skills Australia has found that we need an extra 32,000 electricians by 2030 and more than an extra 80,000 on top of that by 2050. We’ve had a temporary shortage of electricians for over 30 years, including whilst Peter Dutton presided over the most broken immigration system in modern history. If skilled migration was going to fix the skills crisis, it would have already.
This gap will only be plugged by renewed effort and investment to train the next generation of electricians and engineers.
“Every nation in the world is electrifying as we shift away from fossil fuels, creating a surge in demand for electricians. Lazy stop gap measures like the one proposed by Peter Dutton will not work and will only set us further behind.
“Mr Dutton needs to grapple with reality rather than grasp for headlines. The Liberal Party needs to break its addiction to throwing tradies under the bus.”
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
[/textblock]
bring back Technical Schools
How about we cut your salary dutts? Or on the other hand give most of it away and live on the wages of a first year tradie……
…..Thought not…
As for your comment OldWomBat, yes completely agree. Of course it couldn’t be the noalition that stuffed up on that one now could it?
Dutton is a dollar dickhead, but I’d pay him less, as he mouths backroom rubbish fron sinister sources, dopey donors, greedy grotty grabbers, media maggots, the right wing mob of misfit nematodal nitwits. Profiteering perverted peanuts are selfishly destroying Australia. Fight them loudly every step of the way. As for their nuclear energy announcements, what uneconomic bilge and blather. Dutton would not know, being the least qualified or experienced type in conservative leadership, ever, A dopey, deranged dill…
Boofhead Duddo is dancing to the tune of his American masters. This means he has set out to destroy everything that Australians hold dear, like job security. home ownership, footbal,l meat pies, kangaroos & Holden cars.
The destruction of TAFE and opening the VET training market to any Tom, Dick or Harry by the previous COALition mismanagers has dealt considerable destruction to trade skills, while enriching shysters, conmen & likely the LIAEBRAL$ party members participatingg in the almost unregulated rort.
Indeed, Dutton and the LNP, significantly Howard first manipulated immigration, attacked the working folk with ‘Work Choices’, and in conjunction with a Labor ‘elite’ mindless arrogance for the ‘classics’ tore vocational education to shreds.
Political wonks across the divide foolishly thought the country could run on land theft, cheap privatizations, mining, agriculture, tourism and bling, as we watched government and private debt go stratospheric – such stupidity, such arrogance. Putting us in the complete social / vocation-tech pickle we are in today.
The wreckage of Tech Schools and TAFE allowed privateer shonks to occupy the space and it became a festering hotbed of corruption and in a tango with usurous and opaque visa schemes, embedded a new slavery in Oz, as well as a diminishing of skills.
Thank goodness Albo Labor is tackling the internecine mess of corruptions head-on – it will take a while to achieve on-the-ground results. And so dire is the tradie shortage, that they will be better served if they tangibly participate in the skilled migration process so necessary to overcome our current and future socio-economic nightmare.
Meanwhile Oz is becoming inured to the blowhard BS of the Duttonate.
In 1937, as Attorney-General, Bob Menzies signed a contract for Australia to provide 300,000 tons of scrap pig iron to Japan. In 1952, he urged the former Allied Nations to keep Japan down. Who was the dopey bastard who signed the contract 15 years earlier? And threatened Waterside Workers who refused to load the ships?
Now, we have Sinophobe Potty Boy Dutton complaining about China, yet wanting a plan that will bring in electricians on visas? Where does he think most of them will come from? Yes. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-Asian, I have three Asian doctors (my GP and two specialists), I go to a chemist run by Asians, I had two lovely Indian nurses attend to me in hospital last year, and have had Filipina nurses, Indian nurses and all sorts. It seems as though Potty Boy doesn’t care about exploitation, as is often the case with racists.
Have read of this, and you might understand why not every electrical employer in Victoria wants to sign up to the standard/required ETU agreement
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.etuvic.com.au/Documents/Industrial/EBA.2021-2025.Contracting%2520%255BFINAL%2520-%2520Updated%252022JUL22%255D.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjcwIfQh4yDAxUvUGwGHc3ZDEoQFnoECBsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw00wOVhROS64eGbWPuFHwii
Dutton’s salary is in the order of $417,600 p/a. The average annual salary for an Australian electrician ranges between $93.6K to ~$107K (per au.talent.com). This rhetoric in regard to electricians (and other tradespeople) being overpaid is the usual ugly LNP hypocrisy, coming as it does out of the mouths of highly paid politicians. Let’s not overlook, also, that Dutton is a multimillionaire business owner, by some estimates worth $300M.
I need to end here, before the gag reflex kicks in.
Stay focused, as LNP’s policy defies electoral and demographic realities that require dog whistling of all things immigration and unionised workers, but working age in permanent population peaked 2009, and has been kept up by mostly temporary churn over of students, backpackers, temp workers and related.
As 5.5 million boomers transition to retirement significant gaps have appeared in not just workforce or working age skills, but taxpayers to fund budgets for more retirees living longer accessing pensions, more healthcare etc.; not only are 70+ year olds the fastest growing cohort with ever increasing old age dependency ratios (vs fewer working age), the same cohort’s longevity adds to ‘population growth’ (staying in data longer), but blamed on undefined ‘immigration’ for a dog whistle.
This inverted demographic pyramid will probably settle mid century post boomers ‘bubble’ or ‘bomb’, globally too, with Australia not returning to a pyramid with more young, but will continue with our culture of modest immigration, with much noise……
Bottom line is, workers or employees now have increasing bargaining power and only thing stopping them from understanding this, is following RW media dog whistles and misrepresentation of immigration &/or population data….. too easily.
A good electrician is worth $107K p.a. Duttolini isn’t worth even a tenth of that, much less the four times that figure he currently receives.