ELECTRICIANS AND plumbers emigrating to Australia will be able to achieve “pre-clearance” for their trades before travelling, under a new union-backed scheme.
A number of different licences and certificates are required for different specialist tradespeople, in additional to visas, before they can take up jobs in Australia.
Securing these permits can involve completion of training courses, which can leave new arrivals in Australia weeks and even months before they are cleared to take up jobs, the Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union said.
“An electrician can’t just go to Australia on a backpacker’s visa and take up a job. They need a licence, which can take months to secure,” the union’s general secretary, Eamon Devoy, said.
Recruitment agencies sometimes misrepresent what is on offer and what qualifications and training tradespeople require to work in Australia, Mr Devoy said.
“There are a lot of bogus situations where people are given the impression that they have been set up with a job, only to arrive there and find they don’t have the necessary licence to take it up, or people get sent out to some job in the desert. What we want is to get quality jobs for people.”
The union has established a scheme with its counterpart in Australia, the Electrical Trades Union, through its training division, Future Skills, to run a training certification and licensing scheme so that Irish electricians and plumbers can get all the necessary documentation before they leave.
The scheme could be compared to the way emigration “pre-clearance” for travel to the US works at Shannon airport, the union said.
“We are working hand in hand with our colleague union to make sure that people have the skills and qualifications they need so that people can take up the best jobs available,” Mr Devoy said.
The union hopes to have the scheme established to coincide with the Working Abroad Expo in Dublin in October. Mr Devoy said there were significant shortages in the plumbing and electrical trades across Australia.
“The Australian government will be coming to the jobs expo in the RDS in October to recruit Irish labour. We’d like to have testing set up by then. There are 20,000 jobs in the craft area in Perth alone and significant skill shortages in Sydney as well.”
The union was developing links with Canada to set up a similar scheme, Mr Devoy said.
