BARBARA HUGGINS Victorian Trades Hall Council

Transcript:BARBARA HUGGINS Victorian Trades Hall Council:
BARBARA HUGGINS Victorian Trades Hall Council Investing in Job Seekers – Partnerships to Success Who We Are: the VTHC Jobs Team Trade Unions are at the forefront of creating safe, respectful and inclusive jobs and workplaces. These projects are funded to progress this with targeted actions We existed to test strategies to get historically excluded people into apprenticeships - including women in male dominated trades, First Nations People, refugees and asylum seekers, long term unemployed and people leaving the criminal justice system We deliver information / industry days, assist in removing financial barriers to success and place people in secure work We could not do this without partnerships Word Key Participant Means service user, member, student etc. Practitioner Means teacher, support worker, project worker etc. Background 2 Who We Worked With 1 What We Were Funded to Do 3 The Job Ready Project 4 The Women Onsite Project What We Knew ‘Marginalisation’ is structural, so we adopted ‘excluded’ instead as the folks that we were funded to work with faced many systemic barriers in the assumptions about who make ‘good’ apprentices e.g., young (anglo) men that had grown up tinkering in their shed with their dad. Can you spot three barriers in the example? Barriers, what barriers? Young (anglo) Men Fathers Sheds Barriers, what barriers? In a nutshell, the apprenticeships system is based on the engagement of young white men who live at home with full support of a family that includes a father and a house with a shed. The initial barriers that identified and developed the project around were: The assumptions about who makes a good apprentice The requirement of a pre-apprenticeship The costs to turn up at your apprenticeship – tools on the first day But wait, there's more, introducing CoVid 19 What workers bore the brunt of the pandemic? What happened to the jobs? How we pivoted: The need to form partnerships became more important. We knew that the people we were working with were struggling with no or little income In this chaos a project, that looked to remove knowledge and financial barriers, was developed Job readiness became more about rights at work as it did about responsibilities at work. Investing in Job Seekers Once we knew that, we looked for partners. We had to be nimble as every month bought another challenge. In the beginning we wanted to work with the ASRC and offer