Australian Waste Industry Losing Skills to Mining

Georgina Davies argues that the Australian waste and recycling industry is in danger of falling into a skills shortage as it haemorrhages skilled workers to the cash rich mining industry.

Queensland is experiencing a period of unprecedented industrial growth, fuelled by the growing mining, resources and construction sectors. Whilst small businesses and some sectors (such as tourism and retail) are struggling in the current economic climate, the mining and resource sector is booming, evidenced by the Queensland economy's growth of 3.5% during the September quarter.

However, this growth is leading to a significant competition for workforce skills for Queensland's. Many overseas projects are reporting the same skills shortages as those demand in Queensland and across Australia.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), during 2009-10 32,737 people were employed in the Australian waste management industry, of which 5114 were in Queensland. Of these, general government sector organisations in Queensland employed 1036 people in activities relating to waste management, contributing to 17.5% of total general government sector employment. 

ABARES - a research bureau within the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - tracks mining and energy projects across Australia.  The most current data up to April 2011, shows 94 projects at an advanced stage of development, with a record capital expenditure of AU$173.5 billion ($185 billion) - an overall increase of 31% from October 2010. In addition, new capital expenditure in the mining industry is estimated to be AU$55.5 billion ($59 billion) in 2010-11, an increase of 53% on 2009-2010 figures.  The majority of these projects are based in Western Australia and Queensland.

Vacancies

The National Resources Sector Employment Taskforce produced a report in 2011, forecasting a demand for 65,000 new jobs in mining and energy by 2015 for new projects, plus 45,000 in construction [nearly all of which would be expected to be employed as non-resident, under fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) or drive-in-drive-out (DIDO) arrangements]. 

The report also anticipated that the resources sector could be 36,000 tradespeople short by 2015. However, this is widely believed to be an underestimation given that the employment data used on the modelling was based on on-site employee data and did not include those off-roster. 

Additionally, these figures do not take into account significant infrastructure projects within Queensland, such as the rebuilding of damaged infrastructure including homes from the floods and cyclone Yassi which occurred during 2011 or the roll-out of the National Broadband Network (NBN) anticipated to create approximately 4500 jobs in Queensland's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector and 30,000 new jobs across Australia. 

A recent survey undertaken by Ai Group indicated that currently more than one third of businesses surveyed stated that they were experiencing skill shortages now, increasing to more than half when they rank the risk for 2015.

Anecdotal evidence across many of the Queensland organisations operating within the waste and recycling industry indicate several workforce challenges, not least the attraction and retention of skilled and semi-skilled occupations, such as mobile plant operators and Heavy Rigid (HR) drivers. 

There are a number of workforce changes impacting the availability of employees.  Demand for skilled labour will occur due to industry workforce turnover.   There has been considerable movement of trade qualified personnel to the mining industry. 

This has been compounded by high occupational detachment in some trades and a decline in the number of apprentices both commencing and completing their apprenticeships.  The Australian Apprenticeship system is sensitive to the economic cycle and historic completion rates for Australia apprenticeships have been around 48%. 

The Australian National Engineering Taskforce report 'Scoping Our Future' reports that Australia currently produces less than half of its annual engineering workforce needs with only around 6,000 engineering graduates annually; and highlights the need for up to an extra 4000 engineers for the roads sector alone over the next eight years. 

Australia has an aging workforce.  Between 30 June 1989 and 30 June 2009, the proportion of Australia's population over the age of 65 years old increased from 11% to 13% and this will increase to between 23-25% by 2056, according to the ABS. 

Whilst skilled migration has historically been an integral part of alleviating skills shortages with both Federal and State level migration systems targeting occupations experiencing skills shortages. Changes by the Department of Immigration during 2010 to the migration occupation lists reduced the number of occupations listed.  Migration to Queensland has then been further impacted by the high Australian Dollar and series of reported unfavorable climatic events.

Waste and recycling implications

It is essential that individual waste and recycling companies are fully aware of their workforce requirements over the short and longer term. 

This requires the identification of all current, planned and proposed projects and service delivery including those early in the feasibility stage.  The identification of workforce requirements early on allows a company to identify possible areas of priority job roles (such as the 'mission critical' and 'hard to fill jobs') and potential skills shortages, and to develop a range of strategies to assist in developing a sustainable and suitably skilled workforce for the duration of a project or service delivery. 

Strategies may include employing apprentices, introducing traineeships, developing and implementing specific training and education programs for upskilling existing staff, targeted recruitment of interstate and international migrants or setting up a best practice model for recruitment. 

Such strategies alongside 'work-life-balance' opportunities for individuals must be considered principally as waste and recycling organisations, particularly small to medium sized enterprises , will be unable to compete with the remuneration packages being offered by the mining and resources sector. 

Failure to plan and implement effective workforce development strategies which address critical issues will severely impact the waste industry's future sustainability and growth.  Whilst investment in misaligned workforce strategies will cost valuable resources for poor returns or benefits. 

Dr. Georgina Davis is a research fellow within the Centre for Environmental Systems Research at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia

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