By Beavis Marks
With the Howard government pushing its brand of neo-liberalism down our throats, training schemes and traineeships are being "restructured" for the benefit of big business. In March I was made to participate in a CES training scheme, which they assured me was the way of the future.
When I received a letter from my CES case manager that I was to attend an introductory talk for a new training scheme, the usual threats of "Failure to attend this could result in all or part of your benefit being cancelled" accompanied the letter.
I did not want to be pulled into some underfunded training scheme that gives the unemployed very little chance of finding future work. I knew the ALP government started many of these schemes just so the unemployment figures would look better (you get taken off the official figures while attending a training course).
I went along for the introduction talk to the "transition centre" the next day. We were told that the transition centre was not your ordinary training scheme; it had a 70% success rate in finding people jobs, preferably in the metal industry. They were taking a group of at least 12 people, all of whom were to be male.
No-one felt optimistic, but most people did want a full-time job, and they offered us a wage of $290 a week (before tax), which was better than the dole.
We soon found out what type of training course this was. Although it was CES funded, the managers running this scheme wanted it to be privatised and self-funding within 10 months.
Boot camp and workshops
We were sent off to a three-day boot camp run by an ex-RAAF private contractor, where we were carefully observed by the trainers and were supposed to develop our teamwork.
Then we were put through three weeks of classroom "training": basic workplace health and safety, budgeting, job-searching and industrial relations. Most of this was an ideological justification of enterprise bargaining, union bashing, sexism in the workplace, training wages and being "a responsible team worker for your future employer".
Next, we were put into a workshop which they were constructing as part of the program. This was supposedly where we were to learn skills and become competent in a workplace environment. Unfortunately, they employ only one supervisor, who was supposed to train people, meet with managers for hours, ensure workplace safety and develop "projects" for the trainees.
We found out that these projects were ways to manufacture marketable products from the trainees, who were being paid $6.25 an hour. This was the way the scheme was supposed to become self-funding: by using cheap labour.
The excuse used by the management was that we were receiving important training until we were ready for the workplace. The only training I received was from some other trainees, who passed on their experience and skills to those who wanted to learn them.
The last stage was job searching and gaining work experience. Supposedly we could discuss a strategy with the managers about what type of work we wanted, but most of us were told that our expectations were unrealistic and we should try a job in an industry they had strong links with. We were pushed into doing "work experience" for a host company paying $0 for our labour on the chance that there might be a job prospect.
We still suspect that there is money going under the table to the managers from some companies who seem to try many trainees in work experience but never provide a job. The whole system stunk of unaccountability.
Resisting
Despite the attempts by the management to ensure that we were ideologically trained workers willing to sell our labour and conditions at the lowest price, it did not work. In my group we had two unionists and one young socialist who were able to undermine this whole process.
We soon found that the group, ranging from ages 21 to 55, had lots to talk about and argue about the wages we were receiving, about the prospects of employment and about standing up for our rights in a workplace. Discussing these themes made us a major headache for the managers and trainers, except for one trainer who was supportive.
We were also able to bring these issues up in informal discussion with other groups coming through. We achieved a form of unity and solidarity I would not have thought possible when I started this thing. I now look back and think: why didn't we bring a trade union into this process? Maybe we still can.
Our group manager resigned two months into our program because of constant complaints about his manipulative behaviour and lies to trainees. Some of us found other employment, but others stayed for the whole six months and were spat back onto the unemployment lines. I got employed as an adult trainee on a lovely government training scheme that subsidises your wages to the employer and gives you $8.45 an hour.
From this scheme, you could envisage training programs under a conservative government trying to destroy the public sector and introduce draconian industrial laws. Privatised training schemes, like privatised CES case management, will not be subject to anti-discrimination legislation and will push more young people into individual contracts and slave wage agreements.
Only by joining more people to unions, getting unions to fight for unemployed workers' rights and involving the community in defending the unemployed will we be able to stop the real agenda of this Liberal government: using unemployed people to push down the wages and conditions of all workers.