Turns Out The Government’s New Internship Program Might Actually Be Illegal
Damn you, pesky minimum wage laws! Damn yoooou!
Ever since it was announced in the budget papers just over a week ago, the government’s proposed PaTH (Prepare, Trial and Hire) internship program for young jobseekers has copped a fair bit of resistance. Unions and non-government political parties are furious at the prospect of vulnerable, unemployed young people working up to 25 hours a week while still receiving substantially less than the minimum wage, and probing of the policy’s finer points by a Senate estimates committee last week turned up a lot more questions than answers.
But news broken by the Sydney Morning Herald earlier today could put PaTH in greater jeopardy than ever. The Australian Council of Trade Unions has received legal advice that PaTH may actually be illegal, as it potentially breaches minimum wage law. PaTH interns who work up to 25 hours a week would receive just $364 — far less than the $432.25 a 25-hour work week on the minimum wage legally demands.
If the ACTU’s legal advice is accurate, that would leave the government open to getting sued by aggrieved jobseekers seeking recovery of their unpaid wages. Either that or the government raises the amount of compensation paid to PaTH participants to comply with the minimum wage, blowing out the cost of a scheme that’s already worth around $840 million.
Turnbull's illegal $4/hr jobs plan betrays working people. https://t.co/SiZf3xrQaU #puttheliberalslast #auspol pic.twitter.com/DaRiKAuUTa
— Australian Unions (@unionsaustralia) May 11, 2016
Whether or not the ACTU’s advice holds up (and they do have an axe to grind in this debate), the government’s plan to sell PaTH as an election policy just got a lot harder. Unions are already running hard on the news, calling on PM Malcolm Turnbull to “drop the illegal PaTH interns program”, and people aren’t going to be overly keen on a jobs scheme that’s already received so much negative publicity. Given PaTH was a fairly terrible idea to begin with, hopefully this news is one more nail in its coffin.