The federal government has announced that it supports, “in principle”, the introduction of enterprise migration labour agreements that would allow multiple employers to bring in 457-visa workers for big resources projects.In a wide-ranging response to last year’s report by the National Resources Sector Employment Taskforce on skills shortages in mining, the government said it was currently working on implementing the agreements.

“The government is consulting stakeholders in the development of enterprise migration agreements to facilitate the entry of overseas skilled workers to work on ‘mega’ resource projects, where there are genuine skilled vacancies that cannot be met from the Australian labour market.
“These agreements will require employers to make a strong commitment to the training of Australians to meet the future skill needs of the project.”
Projects with a total value over a certain amount will be eligible to use the agreements, but this threshold has yet to be set and will follow discussions with stakeholders.

Minister for Skills and Jobs Chris Evans said the government would also bring in fast-tracked apprenticeships for workers already in the sector.
“Under the adult apprenticeship project, experienced workers will have their existing skills recognised, and be given the opportunity to complete the competencies required to get a full trade qualification in just 18 months.

Workers would be given the opportunity to take part in either on- or off-the-job training, he said.Evans said the government had also set aside $200 million to fund new, targeted training programs for in-demand skills.Companies in the industry could apply for funding to upskill their own workers, including training existing tradespeople as supervisors, as well as recruiting and training new workers.

The government expects the fund to deliver training to 39,000 workers over four years, in critically skills-short areas of the resources, construction, infrastructure and renewable energy sectors.Evans said the government was also creating a new role for a regional coordinator to help match resources professionals with fly-in-fly-out roles in north Queensland.”If successful, this pilot project may be rolled out to other regional centres.”

Source:recruitmentblogs.com.au

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