Older workers and casual and part-timers are
more likely to be laid off as Australia's manufacturing industry continues to
shrink, according to a global report out this morning.
The warning comes from the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which says older
Australians struggle the most to find a new job which is usually much lower
paid.
The OECD's call to improve services for laid
off workers comes as the steel maker Arrium announced it was going into
voluntary administration, putting the future of its Whyalla steel operations in
further jeopardy.
The author of the OECD's study into
Australian layoffs, Christopher Prinz, told the ABC's AM program that
better employment services were needed for laid off workers, in particular
older ones.
"It's not only older people who are
affected but what we do still continuously find is if it is older people who
are laid off, they have a much harder time to find back into the labour
market," Mr Prinz said.
"These are people who have had good jobs
for a long time and all of a sudden, unprepared, they need to find a new job
and that is not straight forward."
The OECD's report comes as local
manufacturing remains under pressure, especially with the Australian dollar
remaining well above 70 US cents despite official interest rates at the
historic low of two percent.
The concerns also coincide with the demise of
Australia's car industry as Holden, Ford and Toyota prepare to close local
operations over the next two years.
"These are exactly the cases in which
some policies are in place to help people who lose their jobs because of bigger
restructurings and the big mass layoffs," Mr Prinz said.
"We are getting older and older the age
from which you are considered like an older worker hasn't really changed but
partly it is to do with the fact that there are people who have been out of the
education system nevertheless for 25 years and therefore, of course, given how
fast things develop, their skills might be outdated."
The OECD report says the current flashpoints
in Australia include manufacturing and the forestry industry in Tasmania.
Mr Prinz told AM that laid off workers
needed special services from government to unsure that are appropriately
skilled for new roles.
"I think it's really about anticipating
change, about preparing people for change, about up skilling people all the
time not only once they have lost their jobs".
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