Mining can't bail out all the jobless, industry warns. 
Shane Green
March 9, 2012



Online political editor Tim Lester looks at the effects of the mining boom against high unemployment rates.


The mining industry has warned it cannot soak up the tens of thousands of workers being shed by manufacturing, saying it wants workers with specific skills, such as tradesmen.   

In a reality check for redundant workers looking for a new start from the mining boom, the Minerals Council of Australia said there were only small pockets of entry-level jobs available.   



''There is no shortage of people wanting to drive trucks and earn $150,000 a year. People think they are going to walk into those jobs. Well, they don't,'' said the council's director of education and training, Chris Fraser.   

Mr Fraser said it was a mistake to equate skills shortages with people shortages. ''The mining industry has got a skill shortage issue - a chronic shortage of mining professionals and tradesmen,'' he said.

The warning reflects the anecdotal evidence from manufacturing workers recently made redundant. At BlueScope Steel in Hastings, which shed about 250 jobs in August, it appears only a handful of workers are finding a new life in the mines.   

The state secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Cesar Melhem, said fewer than 10 redundant workers were expected to end up with mining jobs.

Mr Melhem said the civil construction jobs in the mining sector were different from the skills of manufacturing workers. ''They've got a pool to pick from,'' he said.

Buffeted by the high Australian dollar, BlueScope cut about 1000 jobs nationally, with most going from its Port Kembla operation in New South Wales. In the wake of the announcement, BHP Billiton - which spun off BlueScope in 2002 - offered the prospect of coalmining jobs to the career steel makers.

A BHP Billiton spokeswoman said almost 60 BlueScope workers had accepted jobs, and another 60 had been offered roles or were in the final stages of being hired. About 20 were working at the company's Illawarra Coal operation.

Labor senator and former metal workers' union head Doug Cameron said Treasury officials made the ''purely theoretical'' argument that manufacturing had to make way for the mining boom.   

''You've got various parts of the economy that are just not creating the jobs,'' he said.   

''You can't expect a 55-year-old boilermaker who's worked all his life at BlueScope Steel in Wollongong to just suddenly pack up.

''They just can't up and head over to Karratha or up to the north of Queensland.''

Despite its importance to the Australian economy, the mining sector is a relatively small employer compared with manufacturing.

The Minerals Council's Mr Fraser said mining's 220,000 workers comprised 2 per cent of the workforce, compared with manufacturing's 10 per cent.

Since the global financial crisis, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the mining sector has created almost 80,000 jobs, while manufacturing has lost 126,000.   

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/mining-cant-bail-out-all-the-jobless-industry-warns-20120308-1un51.html#ixzz1oZGeOfMP

So the GREAT BIG SKILLS SHORTAGE IN MINING wasn't about jobs for everyone !!

Sounds like it was just a lot of hot air !!

They should have taken my advice and created some real jobs manufacturing electric cars because Victoria is f.cked now !!

Of course it isn't jobs for everyone, you do need to have some skills and ideally, a degree oh..and be able to pass a drug-test.

A good point Brendan, but just how low would our dollar need to go before we could compete against the Chinese / Indian / hell, even US labour market? Do you think Australian worker in manufacturing would accept comparable conditions / pay?

We need to focus on high-end tech skills and compete in ways that the low-cost labour market can't...Renewable technologies? idk...But you're going to need skills to work in those industries as well...

topend geo wrote on Mar 9^th, 2012 at 2:17pm:


Doesn't work like that.

A perfect example is in the digital camera manufacturing base. Its all made in low wage countries.

Companies had already shipped their manufacturing base by the time the digital revolution arrived. So when the US developed digital technology, it did not create work in America, they just continued to make the new product in the same overseas locations.

If the IPads were made in the US, I have read where they would make 150-200 dollars approx on each item. They make more doing it from cheap labour-land, so thats the way it is.

You would need a nationalist mercantile type government with an actual vision for their country - like China and India have - to succeed in this world today the way it is set up. And China is proof of that.