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Opportunity Knocks with Migrant Workers - valued assets in these trying times

By Rosemary Kelada, CEO, Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre

  Melbourne - An opportunity is knocking for both employers and retrenched manufacturing workers, like the latest group from Pacific Brands. It is easy to become depressed about the global financial crisis and to consider the prospective unemployment of many of the manufacturing workers, many of them migrant men and women, as being a further layer of disadvantage for them. In our experience, however, migrants have much to offer potential employers.

Employers need to think of migrants as valued assets who bring life experience, transferable skills, bilingual and bicultural skills.

Recruiting migrants and, where necessary, providing them with retraining opportunities means going beyond the traditional pool and gaining an edge at a time of high skill demands. It requires a bit of thinking outside the square, but brings invaluable benefits.
 
Like most of Australia’s multicultural population, migrant workers are bilingual and bicultural – this can assist employers to understand their marketplace and tap into different networks. Whether it is banks or mining companies, who wish to raise their profile and increase their customers from particular communities, migrant workers can bring bi-cultural intelligence giving businesses an edge and saving money on marketing to find out the same information. Employers have reported to Spectrum that their businesses have gained an edge by employing migrants as they have
 - been motivated, keen and loyal workers, because of the “real opportunity” provided to them which is reflected in their “good work ethic”;
 - ensured that their staff reflect the clientele they serve and speak their languages;
- tended to do positions that locals won’t do (eg. unskilled);
 - brought “intelligence” about the communities they’re serving (where they shop, what they watch to get their information etc); &
- helped them better understand the cultural nuances of the business culture in the home countries of their staff, thereby improving import and export opportunities.
 
As an example of an innovative approach, in 1998, Spectrum developed an aged care brokerage service - its Multicultural Home Support Service (MHSS) program - after a serious labour market shortage was identified of bilingual workers in the health and community services sector across Melbourne. At the time, ageing Italian, Greek, Turkish and Macedonian migrants were not accessing mainstream respite care services. The MHSS program served a dual purpose - employing difficult-to-place migrants who had been retrenched from the declining manufacturing sector and faced barriers, such as the lack of formal education, no qualifications and poor English.
 
Spectrum worked closely with home care service providers in the region to understand the industry needs and staffing requirements. We worked in partnership with our local TAFE, and since then, our own training organisation, to develop a culturally responsive Certificate III in Aged Care & Home & Community Care (HACC), with customised training, involving flexible teaching and assessment methods,and started recruiting trainees.
 
The MHSS program now provides 105 trained HACC workers to 30 different agencies, who speak a total of 43 languages. Many of these workers live in Melbourne's northern suburbs, a region which, over the past 10 to 15 years, has already borne the impact of the decline of the manufacturing industry and now the economic slowdown. Whilst, nationally, by 2011, nearly 1 in every 4 people aged 65+ will speak a language other than English, aged care is just but one industry benefiting from bilingual workers. In this global economy, it is important that services across industries are able to reflect and respond to the diversity of the population they serve.
 
Like the Pacific Brands machine operator, referred to in yesterday's Age, Arife Koksal, who said her “chances of getting another job were slim”, many of the retrenched workers we have worked with were in the same situation and received a great self-esteem boost from employers like Spectrum who could see the value in their skills. Often many migrant workers have worked in manufacturing because it has been their first and only job since their migration and it has not been a job that has fully utilised their skills. Many have gone onto more satisfying and fulfilling jobs – we hope that Pacific Brands workers, and other employers, provide staff with re-training opportunities prior to the end of their current contracts, so that potential employers and society can continue to benefit from the many skills migrant workers have to offer our society.
 
This story was first published in the Opinion Pages of The Age  – Thursday 27 February 2009