TCF manufacturing not so bad
I do not believe that this story truly represents the current state of employment in the Australian TCF sector. Based on discussions with members of the Council of Textile and Fashion Industries of Australia (TFIA) - a separate entity to TFIA Business Services - it would seem that in many areas of the industry, employees have seen wage increases in the thousands rather than hundreds of dollars as competition heightens to attract suitably qualified workers in areas such as pattern making, pre-production and sample machining. In the area of technical textiles many of the employees are university qualified commanding significant salaries.
By dividing total wages and salaries by the number of employees you capture part-time and casual workers and thus skew the overall result. It is much better to look at the growth rates over time of these measures for a more accurate An examination of the growth in wages and salaries per employee between 2001/02 to 2004/05 shows that for textile, clothing, footwear and leather wages and salaries per employee grew at an average of 2.7 per cent per year on par with the growth for total manufacturing, food, beverage and tobacco manufacturing, metal product manufacturing and machinery and equipment manufacturing. This rate was above the growth rate of printing and publishing manufacturing (2.4 per cent) and the average 1.9 per cent per annum growth experienced by the petroleum, chemical and coal product manufacturing sector.
Looking more closely shows that for clothing manufacturing the rise in wages and salaries was 3.4 per cent on average over the four years and for textile manufacturing 2.3 per cent on average over the four years. This would seem to be in line with the evidence that both these sectors are experiencing growth, driven by specialised clothing production such as personal protective equipment for the former and by technical and specialised textiles for the latter.
In respect to clothing manufacturing, the fall in wages and salaries has been significantly lower than the decline in employment suggesting that much of this rise is due to higher payments by workers. For textiles manufacturing the difference is even more marked with wages and salaries for this sub-sector rising by just under 1 per cent per year against a fall of 1.7 per cent in employment each year. Again this is evidence that workers in the textile manufacturing sector are receiving higher wages and salaries overall than they were in 2001/02.
While data is not available for the 2005/06 and 2006/07 year anecdotal evidence suggests that wages have grown at the same rate if not quicker than the 2.7 per cent average growth over the previous four years.
The Council of Textile and Fashion Industries of Australia Limited has been involved in and remains a strong supporter of a variety of means to attract new entrants to the industry. Articles such as yours do little to address this issue. Indeed after reading your article and many others like it you could ask 'Who would want to work in the TCF sector?'
The TFIA has been working with RMIT and the Inner City VET cluster to encourage students into TCF in addition to working with the TCFUA, RMIT, Industrial Relations Victoria and Department of Victorian Communities on a project to assess train and employ home workers into the industry. Both these measures are designed to address the skills shortage emerging in the industry.
I do welcome the discussion that this article has generated as it provides a very useful means of highlighting the true nature of the industry and how the industry has and is changing for the better.
Executive director
Council of Textile and Fashion Industries of Australia Limited