With employment in the WA resources sector hitting another all-time high, together with growing confidence across the whole economy, our industry is experiencing a range of constraints to labour mobility, particularly enticing more skills into the regions – where our members’ operations are located. A lack of housing availability, as well as access to childcare, are now critical constraints to attracting skilled labour, particularly in the Pilbara and Goldfields regions.
Many CME members have explored, invested and implemented creative solutions and incentives to help address these constraints in the short, medium and long term. CME has advocated at both State and Federal levels of government to raise these issues and our proposal on reforms to Fringe Benefit Tax on employer sourced or provided housing and incentives for companies to support childcare services in the regions. In addition, CME will continue to advocate a whole of government approach to address the critical childcare shortage in WA. No doubt, these issues and more will be fleshed out further at the upcoming Pilbara Summit 2021.
I will be travelling to Bunbury, Collie, Karratha, Kalgoorlie and Broome over the next month and look forward to meeting with members and external stakeholders in each of these locations.
Contact: Susan Cull, State Manager – Regional WA
Email: s.cull@cmewa.com
