Māori and Pasifika Trades Training
‘Economic wellbeing’ means having livelihoods that enable people to live with dignity, and work that is meaningful and purposeful too. But this is an increasingly distant reality for many Māori and Pasifika peoples.
It’s hard not to see evidence of the building boom happening in Tāmaki Makaurau, with major infrastructure programmes and a plethora of highly visible cranes along the CBD’s horizon in all directions. We already had an infrastructure and housing deficit and that’s now exacerbated by the weather events that have hit our built and natural environments.
Māori and Pasifika are a significant part of the workforce building Auckland and are more likely to be working in construction compared with the average Aucklander:
12.8% of Māori and 9.2% of Pasifika peoples in Tāmaki Makaurau worked in construction, compared with 6.1% of Pākehā, and the city-wide average of 8.9%; and
about 25-30% of people working in infrastructure in Auckland, including utilities, are Māori or Pasifika.
Māori and Pasifika peoples have a long and proud history in these ‘blue collar’ jobs and were often the backbone of the workforces which built the country’s physical infrastructure. It remains a critical industry that will always be needed and is an important part of our overall economic success as a country.
However:
12.1% of all Māori and 17% of all Pasifika peoples are stuck in low paid general labouring compared to just 5.2% of Pākehā.
More than a quarter (26%) of Auckland’s labourers are Pasifika (approximately 17,000 people at the last Census) despite being 14.2% of the Auckland working age population.
Māori are also over-represented in labouring, but much less so than Pasifika peoples – 14.5% of labourers are Māori (circa 9,500 people) compared to 10.7% of the total working age population.
The average income for Pasifika peoples in the sector is just $24,100 with Māori at $27,000, compared to the city-wide average of $34,400 and $41,400 for Pākehā.
As a sector known for ‘boom and bust’ cycles, downturns have a particular impact on Māori and Pasifika who are over-represented in its workforce and, in the bad years, subsequent unemployment figures. Instead of being a pathway to financial security and economic wellbeing, it’s too often a cul-de-sac of in-work poverty and underutilisation and a merry-go-round of precarious employment, all of which have blighted south and west Auckland for decades.
Vocational education continues to be a necessary part of the education ecosystem, preparing people with practical technical skills for specific jobs. And, after all, an academic pathway isn’t for everyone. However, our big data research of Māori and Pasifika 25-year-olds in south Auckland found that the only vocational qualification which places them in the top ten percent of earners for their age is engineering; on average, university is still the best bet for future earning power. This shouldn’t be a stark binary choice; Māori and Pasifika should thrive from both.
We need workers in vocational occupations, but this cannot be at the expense of Māori and Pasifika prosperity.
Apprenticeships (or equivalents) are important markers of industry standards and employee competency and affects the levels of wages or salaries that can be commanded. Yet only 13% of Māori enter apprenticeships and, even worse, only half of them complete. Only one percent of young Māori go into (higher paying) engineering apprenticeships.
The research also found that the tertiary education system in south Auckland is producing perverse outcomes; most qualifications acquired by young south Aucklanders are levels two to four (some of which could be obtained at secondary school for free), and the median average student loan debt is more than $17,000. Whilst this level of study-related debt is generally on par with young people from other places in Auckland, the earning power of lower-level qualifications is considerably less than for those with level six and above qualifications.
This means that many young Māori and Pasifika in south Auckland are at a high risk of racking up debt for qualifications that will not enable them to earn enough to repay what they owe.
In the tech world however, Māori and Pasifika are grossly under-represented even though the fourth industrial revolution is, and will increasingly be, a major shaper of labour market demand.
With just 6.8% of all Māori and Pasifika peoples employed in tech roles, south and west Auckland risk being left even further behind as the future of work continues to change. The average income of Māori and Pasifika peoples in tech professions is currently more than $92,000 per annum (but even so, there is an ethnic pay gap between Māori and Pasifika workers and others).
What we don’t need is more public policies and investments that continue to miss the mark. If we don’t tackle these issues at source, well intended active labour market policies will continue to be part of the problem rather than enabling us to leap to an economy of mana.
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Māori and Pasifika Trades Training, or MPTT as it’s more commonly known, is a national programme funded by the Tertiary Education Commission for Māori and Pasifika peoples aged between 16 and 40 years old.
The courses are designed for people to gain a pre-trades qualification as a precursor to starting employment or an apprenticeship. Many courses are related to construction, infrastructure and the allied trades, but not exclusively. Training courses can be anywhere from a few weeks to 12 months long depending on the qualification.
Most importantly, the courses are fees-free, and consortia have other resources available to manaaki learners and graduates.
There are 16 MPTT consortia around the country. The Southern Initiative (TSI) leads one of those consortia (there are two others in Auckland) but we’re the only one in the country led by local government and our main focus is what difference can be made to labour market outcomes and income inequality rather than the training per se. MPTT was one of the first programmes that TSI became involved in when it was first established.
All our courses are delivered by private training establishments, including Māori and Pasifika providers. In addition to construction, infrastructure and the allied trades, we also have tech courses as well. Our consortium trains approximately 195 women and men per annum.
Are you looking for details about the courses and how to sign up? Find out more
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As an innovation team with a laser-like focus on economic equity, TSI’s interest in MPTT is threefold.
Firstly, our active participation in tertiary education gives us first-hand, real-life experience of the pipeline from vocational education to the labour market. It enables us to gather precise insights on what works and what doesn’t, for whom and why, as well as the ecosystem of the public, private and third sector actors involved. This information directly inputs into our strategic policy and systems change work. Without this first-hand experience, our influencing would lack credibility.
Secondly, Māori and Pasifika peoples are overrepresented in construction and infrastructure. The trades can offer great careers and lots of very successful Māori and Pasifika owned businesses are in this sector (check out Amotai) but, for the large part, Māori and Pasifika workers are in the lowest paid positions. We’re not going to reach a balance any time soon, so we need to work with the current situation so that more Māori and Pasifika peoples get the best of what the sector can offer and not the worst.
On the other hand, Māori and Pasifika peoples are grossly underrepresented in tech careers, which tend to be well paid and are the future of work, which is why we’ve included tech courses and hope to introduce more.
Thirdly, whilst TSI is a ‘think-and-do’ tank we must also make a tangible difference to real people’s lives. We know that Māori and Pasifika peoples can’t afford to wait for macro-level or systems changes and whilst this is our ultimate goal, we need to make a positive difference at grass roots level at the same time.
That’s why we have a strong, practical focus on labour market entry, attachment and progression because there is no point in running courses if they don’t make a material difference to people’s finances and disrupt economic inequality at a household level.
The Auckland Council family is a large buyer of construction and infrastructure works. Council is also the third largest employer of ICT professionals in Auckland. Whilst this is not a direct driver, we leverage these things to test and trial different approaches and we’ve learnt that there is a unique advantage in being in both the demand and supply sides when prototyping.
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We’ve worked with learners, training providers, council colleagues, employers, procurers, NGOs, tertiary education institutions, local and central government partners, large infrastructure projects, academics, economists, unions, whānau/’aiga, young people and support services to understand what it takes to enable better labour market outcomes.
In MPTT, we’ve made some gains to be proud of and gathered lots of learnings in the process.
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Using procurement
Partnering with Auckland Transport, we were the first in the country to introduce social procurement and that went on to influence the entire country. However, New Zealand has still to realise the kind of impact seen overseas in using labour market insertions, and much more work is needed in ensuring we have the necessary maturity in both the demand and supply sides to deliver on its full potential.
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Women
Female participation in our construction and infrastructure courses has always been the highest in the country, more than a third of our learners in some years, compared to the national average of just 5%. Across all TSI’s work that touches on male dominated industries, addressing gender-based occupational and industry segregation and gender (and ethnicity) pay gaps is good for both women’s equality and the industries involved.
Our female graduates are in high demand from employers and often excel in their new professions. However, we also noticed that these employment opportunities can add to the complexity in their lives, especially when there are complicated childcare responsibilities and issues such as family harm, and it merely increased the weight of toxic stress. In these circumstances, we also noticed that things tended to derail after about a year into their new employment.
Ensuring an appropriate level of wage or salary to mitigate this is important – it’s not a silver bullet (there are none) but having more money does give women more choices. However, sometimes even this is not enough of a mitigating or harm reducing factor. We’ve also learnt that being exposed to successful female role models in the industry and making it more female-friendly is welcomed and useful but, as a tactic by itself, is not enough to short circuit the situation either.
In partnership with Ama Training Group we deliver our Infrastructure Works Level 2 programme in Wiri Women’s Prison. This partnership was established to reach our most under-served whānau as we wanted to provide an opportunity to support and enable the most marginalised wāhine to enter a trades career.
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Quality over quantity
We have always been committed to making deep and lasting change over shallow change at scale.
We were the first to make a stand on requiring “quality employment” for our graduates and introduced a wage strategy with their employers, starting at the living wage with intentional salary progressions linked to achieving productivity milestones to reach 10% above the total Auckland median wage within 24 months. Even benchmarking against the Auckland median hourly wage rather than the much lower Māori or Pasifika medians was a relatively unusual concept. This was important for raising the bar of everyone’s aspirations for Māori and Pasifika prosperity.
A couple of years ago, MPTT trialed its own employment brokerage and coaching vs outsourced employment brokerage to test our theory on quality employment and the use of a wage strategy. Over a 12-month period, 233 people were brokered into work; 57% by our own employment brokers and coaches and 43% by outsourced employment brokerage services.
The evaluation showed that approaches prototyped by our employment brokers and coaches (i.e. using the wage strategy, focusing on upskilling and close capability building with both training providers and employers) were effective in obtaining relatively higher starting wages than the generic outsourced employment brokerage. What this showed us was the value of acting with intent and purposefulness in relation to income. This work went on to directly inform Uptempo and Te Taiwhanga Rangatahi as well.
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Serving Māori and Pasifika employers – having supply and demand in the same programme
MPTT recently moved to the Amotai team so we can support their 680 Māori and Pasifika owned businesses here in Tāmaki Makaurau with their recruitment needs, and potentially create opportunities with the further 1,100 members in other parts of the country. No other Māori and Pasifika business network has its own training arm, and no other Māori and Pasifika training programme is deep inside a business network. Like our procurement work, we’ve got supply and demand all in the same package and are keen to understand what difference this might make.
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Our latest results
70%
of spaces on our courses were filled despite Covid-19 lockdowns and a tight labour market
80%
of learners successfully completed their training course70%
of graduates moved forward, with the majority entering employment and others moving into higher-level study45%
of learners identified as Māori55%
of learners identified as Pasifika37%
of learners were female, with more than a third being trained in Wiri Women’s Prison -
We still have some way to go in fully understanding the systems change that’s needed to crack the inertia of economic inequality, and particularly labour market and income inequalities.
Reforms to vocational education through Te Pūkenga and the establishment of the Workforce Development Councils and Regional Skills Leadership Groups are highly relevant to our work, as is the Tertiary Education Commission.
But our insight is that structural or curriculum changes are not enough to make a difference when the problem is this complex, involving multiple causes and effects, multiple players at multiple levels set against a backdrop of some of the worst inequality in the OECD; it’s a good example of a definitively ‘wicked problem’.
MPTT will continue to focus on understanding what it takes to disrupt economic inequality and improve livelihoods.
We need to understand scale – what needs to scale deep (values, culture, practices, ‘hearts and minds’) vs scale up (policies, laws, regulations, institutions, ‘rules of the game’) vs scale out (replication and reaching greater numbers of people). There is no point in scaling out if all that is being achieved is simply deploying more people into the trap of in-work poverty.
We’ll also concentrate on testing innovations in the following areas:
Continuous insight generation about entry, attachment and progression in the labour market and the wide range of dynamics that affect this.
Collapsing the gap between employers and learners/graduates (i.e. potential employees) with a strong focus on Amotai businesses.
Greater movement toward work-based learning and micro-credentials.
Testing new courses and ways of training in green skills and other emerging fields to better understand how we might create competitive advantage and first mover advantage in sunrise industries to leapfrog from the current situation.
Better leverage TSI’s other programmes such as stronger connections to Uptempo and Te Taiwhanga Rangatahi, and building in the indigenous systems change insights from Tamariki Wellbeing and the Co-design Lab.