Labor will get more young people into work and keep them there by giving them real skills and real opportunities through the Working Futures program. 

Each year Labor will support 20,000 people aged between 15 and 24 through a comprehensive work and training program that sets them on the right path to ongoing quality jobs.

It will offer real training for real jobs. This is in stark contrast to the Liberals’ exploitative Youth PaTH program, which subsidises employers to place jobseekers on internships without sufficient protections.

As part of the program job seekers will take part in:

• A six-week work readiness course focusing on essential employment skills as well as personal presentation, interview techniques and job hunting.

• A six-month work placement with an employer, paid at an award-equivalent training wage.

• A fully-funded Certificate III in a subject of their choice.

As a priority the program will focus on young people who have been unemployed for more than a year and have no post-school qualifications.

We want to get more young people into work, giving them the skills they need to get a job and keep it.

Providing comprehensive support to these jobseekers will over time lower the number of long-term unemployed young people in Australia.

This is in addition to Labor’s announcements that it will bridge the skills gap by creating 10,000 new Apprentice Ready places, ensure a funding guarantee for TAFE, and invest in our universities rather than imposing $100,000 degrees, which is what the Liberals would like to do.

The program’s participants will receive fair pay for their work, which will not only justly compensate them for their work but it will also protect wage standards across the workforce, instead of undercutting wages as the Liberals’ plan will do.

The Liberals’ Youth PaTH to nowhere program is drastically inferior to Labor’s Working Futures.

The Abbott-Turnbull Government’s program does not create additional jobs. Instead, it subsidises employers to place jobseekers on internships without sufficient protections. It is exploitative.

Malcolm Turnbull is promising a 4-week supermarket “internship”. Labor is promising a 6-month work placement with accredited training.

The youth unemployment rate remains double the national average at 12.4 per cent.

There are 262,000 young Australians who are out of work, and 40,000 who are considered long term unemployed. Working Futures will give those young people the best chance to get into and keep a real, decent job.

This plan has been costed by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office. The cost of the program is fully offset by reductions in other wage subsidy and employment programs – the same reductions the Government has identified in the 2016 Budget.

Read more about Labor’s positive plan to get our young Australians on the right path to work at www.100positivepolicies.org.au/working_futures_fact_sheet

FRIDAY, 17 JUNE 2016