Skill Shortages - Part 3

I have previously accused the mainstream media of regurgitating the press releases of "vested interests" and now I am about to do the same. Here is a relevant one from the Australian Computer Society (ACS) from September last year.

-- Start of Press Release --

September 12, 2007 - 1:47PM

While Australia continues to have its lowest unemployment rate in decades, ICT professionals in their middle years aren't sharing in the rewards.

One in three ICT professionals in the 41- to 50-year-old age bracket have been unemployed in the past five years, at a time when the sector is experiencing an unemployment rate of 3.84 per cent, nearly half a per cent lower than the national average.

This is one of findings from the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Employment Survey for 2007, released today by the Australia Computer Society (ACS).

ACS president Philip Argy said the higher level of unemployment across the 41-50 age group was of concern.

"It is more likely that this unemployment is derived from a combination of age discrimination and either real or imagined concerns about the currency of their ICT skills."

The survey also revealed that 19.2 per cent of respondents felt that they had experienced discrimination on the basis of their age, and 9.6 per cent of respondents felt that they had been discriminated against on the basis of race and ethnicity.

"The survey results demonstrate that mature and experienced workers are being sidelined and their skill levels and corporate memory are being ignored. With the ICT industry suffering from major skills shortages, Australia is not in a position to ignore skilled professionals," Argy said.

Another disturbing finding in the survey is that 27.8 per cent of female respondents felt they had been discriminated against on the basis of gender, compared to 1.5 per cent of males.

It also found that sexual discrimination was significantly higher in Queensland and Western Australia.

-- End of Press Release --

The ICT industry in Australia, in particular has been decimated by the talking up of "skill shortages" and the bringing in of foreign workers under the 457 visa.

Clearly big business have discarded and ignored older workers because they have been able to easily import younger, cheaper and more compliant foreign substitutes.

And our Immigration Department and it's policy people have obviously been no intellectual match for the *spin meisters* employed by the large foreign owned ICT companies that have driven this agenda and which has been so damaging to Australian ICT workers.

So the message is rather stark.

If our Immigration Department has been "rolled" by the large ICT companies – why wouldn’t they have also been "rolled" by other large industries?

The truth is that they have been.

As I said previously – "Skill Shortages – its mostly BS".