The Gov Admits Their BS Internships Could Be Used To Dodge Penalty Rates

Frankly, we could quite easily have used this as the lead image for this yarn instead:

The Turnbull Government‘s plan to push some 10,000 young unemployed people into 12-week entry-level retail internships that’ll net them a grand total of $4 per hour is both a) supremely cooked, and b) remarkably easy to rort.
We already knew that the idea was fundamentally flawed on almost every level; the program itself feels extremely loosely regulated and has extreme potential to create revolving-door labour operations that take full-paying jobs away from actual workers, creating a kind-of self-feeding program of underemployment and misery.
But the Government has now admitted that the PaTH internship program could also have the knock-on effect of allowing employers to avoid paying penalty rates due to the fact that they’re powerless to prevent businesses from giving certain shifts to interns that would’ve otherwise gone to full-pay employees.
The Shop, Distributive, and Allied Employee’s Association revealed that there are no safeguards in place to prevent businesses engaging with the program from staffing weekend penalty rate shifts with interns, effectively meaning they pay nothing for Sunday work.
A spokesperson for the SDA questioned the level of scrutiny employers in the program will receive, stating concern that businesses will be allowed to engage interns in dodgy conditions for far too long before action is ever brought against them.

There are no safeguards – that’s the nature of the internship,” he said. “Those who would otherwise normally be employed will be replaced by interns … It frees retailers from applying penalty rates on weekends.

“The Australian Retailers Association said they will be keeping a close eye on this, to make sure that doesn’t happen, but they’ve not articulated any particular system to audit compliance.”

“[At what] point will a business be disqualified? After they’ve gone through a dozen interns? Half a dozen? By the government’s own admission, only 15% of people are getting jobs. This endless merry-go-round could go on and on.”


The Department of Employment has admitted that the interns could be asked to work weekend shifts ordinarily staffed by paid workers, provided weekend work is a “normal part” of trade.

However, the Department asserted that businesses were not allowed to fire workers to make room for interns, and were not allowed to reduce paid workers’ hours in order to accomodate the interns. Interns “hired” must also be provided a host supervisor, according to the Government. Which sounds good on paper, but in practice it seems more like they’ve invented the concept of a boss.
The retail internship program – which will be offered by companies like Baker’s Delight and Coffee Club – will see young people aged between 17 and 24 given roles that pay $200 per fortnight on top of their pre-existing Centrelink benefits. They will be allowed to work a maximum of 50 hours per fortnight, for anywhere between four and twelve weeks.
The Government will foot the bill for the $200 payments, and businesses will receive $1,000 per intern they take on board.
Yeah, nothing’s gonna go wrong here.

Source: The Guardian.

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