Australian Council of Trade Unions submission to the Strategic Review of Apprentice Incentives
Introduction
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is the peak trade union body in Australia, with 43 affiliated unions and states and regional trades and labour councils, representing approximately 2 million workers across the country who are engaged across a broad spectrum of industries and occupations in the public and private sectors. As custodians of the skills and training system and the representatives of apprentices and trainees across the country, the ACTU welcomes the opportunity to provide a submission to the Strategic Review.
It is our view that the current system of apprentice incentives fundamentally misunderstands the push and pull factors on apprentices – failing to adequately incentivise apprentices to enter the system or to complete their training. This is occurring not only because the system fails to adequately incentivise apprentices themselves, but also because it often succeeds in incentivising poor behaviour from employers at worst or at best simply fails to disincentivise that behaviour.
This submission will not focus particularly on the issues in the apprenticeship system – the long-term poor completion rates, lack of diversity among the student cohort and other issues that are well known. Instead, we will focus primarily on the failure of the current incentive and other systems to effectively address these issues and on laying out how this can be addressed.
In addition to a poorly designed system of incentives, there are a number of other factors which we believe are materially impacting apprentice commencement and completions which will be explored further in our submission. These factors include:
The system can also do much more to encourage, and directly incentivise, the involvement of marginalised cohorts in apprenticeships, especially women in male-dominated trades. Addressing these issues with the steps we recommend below would also likely allow the Government to more fully meet the recommendations of ILO Recommendation No 208 (2023) on Quality Apprenticeships (which the Government voted for in the ILO).
It is also our belief that there are a number of systems not specifically covered by the terms of reference which actively prevent apprenticeship take up or disincentivise employers from offering apprenticeships. It is our view that, while we understand the Review may be reluctant to provide recommendations with regard to these areas, the Review should make findings highlighting the negative impact that these factors have and how any holistic attempt to address issues in the apprenticeship system should consider them as issues to be addressed.
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