Items Tagged With "Employment"

Minister for Employment Participation, Mark Arbib, today said the Australian Government’s improvements to training packages will help grow a skilled workforce to meet future needs.

Speaking at the opening of the Service Skills Australia National Conference in Sydney, Senator Arbib outlined the government’s plans for ensuring the quality of Australian education and training.

Senator Arbib said the Australian Quality Training Framework would allow for more uniformity in training packages.

Minister for Employment Participation, Mark Arbib, will tomorrow host an Indigenous Employment Forum, with some of Australia’s biggest corporations at Parliament House, Canberra.

The Indigenous Employment: Everyone’s Business forum will support Australian businesses in their efforts to close the gap on Indigenous employment outcomes.

It will focus on the key areas of school to work transitions, recruitment and retention strategies, training, mentoring, and building Indigenous enterprise.

The Rudd Government today announced more than $1 million funding for Ngarda Civil and Mining to help employ and train 91 Indigenous people in the Pilbara region.

Minister for Employment Participation Mark Arbib said the funding, under the Indigenous Employment Program (IEP), would see 50 Indigenous people employed at Ngarda’s Pilbara operations, as well as the recruitment of an Indigenous cadet to undertake undergraduate studies.

Parliamentary Secretary for Employment Jason Clare today visited the first National Green Jobs Corps project underway at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in Queensland. 

The National Green Jobs Corps will give up to 10,000 young people the opportunity to develop green skills through 26 weeks of accredited training and work experience. The program will make environmental improvements now while helping to develop the green skills that will increasingly be needed in the labour market of the future.

Labour force figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show that the unemployment rate fell by 0.1 per cent in December from the revised unemployment rate of 5.6 per cent in November.

This brings Australia’s unemployment rate to 5.5 per cent while the participation rate in December remained at 65.2 per cent.

The number of Australians employed in December increased by 35,200 to 10.906 million, driven by a rise in part-time employment, together with a rise in full-time employment.

The first transitional education visits are being conducted by the Fair Work Ombudsman during Fair Work Week to ensure businesses understand their rights and responsibilities under the new national workplace relations system.

Today the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the South Australian Minister for Industrial Relations, Paul Caica, visited workplaces with the Fair Work Ombudsman, Nick Wilson, in Adelaide.

This heralds the start of 50,000 workplace visits across Australia this year to familiarise them with the Fair Work system.

On the first day of Fair Work Week, the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has visited Linfox in Sydney to talk about the new simpler national workplace relations system.

The move to a national workplace relations system will mean everyone in the Linfox supply chain will now be covered by the same workplace laws.

Previously, businesses which operated across State and Territory borders were forced to comply with different workplace relations laws in each jurisdiction.

The new national Fair Work system gives Australian parents the right to request flexible working arrangements when returning to work after the birth of a child.

Fair Work also gives working families the ability to request an additional 12 months unpaid parental leave if they choose.

These provisions will help Australian workplaces be more productive, harmonious, have less staff turnover and attract the most talented employees.