Trade barrier

A lobby group has identified a minor barrier to women becoming tradies while ignoring the key reason: two female Senators and the CFMEU. By James Mathias.

There is a barrier to women who wish to work in trades, according to Fiona Lawrie, the CEO of Tradeswomen Australia.

She’s right, but for reasons that she may not know about. The barrier is two women: Senators Pauline Hanson and Jacquie Lambie.

Instead, Lawrie criticises the Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Businesses, which recently published a list of the 65 skills most desperately needed by Australian employers.

Of those 65 skills, “62 can be classed as male-dominated trades; [and] only 3 could be classed as female dominated,” she said.

Tradeswomen Australia, which according to the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission received 92 per cent of its income from a government grant, set out to, among other things, “develop research about the barriers women in trade face when entering and remaining in trade.”

In the two years since it was established, it has produced just three reports of its own that seek to identify the key issues affecting female apprentices and tradies. A notable omission in the reports is that there has been a 6 per cent increase in the number of women completing a trade between the June 2018 and 19 quarters.

This is not to say that women as a percentage of the total number of tradies remains low.

Since 1980 the number of women in the workforce has almost tripled to 6 million and yet according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the number of working women in construction has fallen by more than 15 per cent in a similar period. This is at odds with other typical male-dominated industries that have increased the percentage of women in their workforces like transport, mining and utilities.

Which brings me back to Senators Hanson and Lambie. One of the key reasons why women are not flocking to become tradies or work in construction was identified by the Heydon Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance: namely union officials intimidating women.

The commission heard evidence of verbal abuse and phone calls to women threatening gang rape from CFMEU officials. In one violent incident, CFMEU officials physically threatened a woman who was five months pregnant.

Criminal convictions are not a deterrent in these instances. Officials who are sent to jail are simply welcomed back to the union upon being paroled.

The Government has introduced the Ensuring Integrity Legislation to Parliament, which would help rein in the CFMEU and other thugs in the union movement.

But the legislation was stopped in the Senate by Hanson and Lambie.

Tradeswomen Australia had the opportunity to advocate strongly that union thuggery is largely to blame for the underrepresentation of women in core trades, such as construction.

Unfortunately, in what can only be described as a bizarre position, it has singled out the Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Businesses’ list of skills in short supply. Adding to the irony, 15 of those “male-dominated” occupations are in construction.