Matthew Ridgeway, Sale
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
I WRITE to your newspaper to challenge a now obvious issue for unemployed people.
The insistence for a potential employer to have a hard requirement for referees for a job application approval will lead to some people being long-term unemployed.
I know this all too well, having been refused employment for such reasons.
Of concern to me are the facts that some jobs one has had in the past is with people or companies that are adversarial by nature, and some deliberately cause ongoing hardship for former employees deliberately.
Some previous employer referrals are no longer contactable, and good employees are relegated to no job opportunities because of these factors.
People that make an effort to undertake study and training are clearly interested in contributing to the community, and probably take on study because of previous bad employment situations.
We all know how hard and how poorly casual workers can be treated, and many people know not to ask a previous employer to be a reference provider in their pursuit for work.
The situation is that good workers will be forced into unsavoury work environments repeatedly for who knows how long, even though they have put the extra yards in to improve their skills and abilities.
I feel that some employers in Gippsland, especially government employers, should reconsider this requirement and should be helping people to gain work experience and good referrals.
Ultimately, I think this requirement to request, and/or provide a reference to get a job should be illegal.
It is counter-productive in helping people find work, and is an insult to good people who have studied and tried to improve their chances to find good jobs for themselves and their families.
I am disappointed that this issue has affected me personally, and I am even more disappointed that others may be subjected to this regime of employment methods that will certainly cause some people significant distress, as it has done to me.
I know many people have had many bad experiences in their jobs, and the employee may not be the problem where a reference may be requested.
I would like some feedback on these issues and I will be writing to the relevant and local members of parliaments (state and federal) to request that these obstructions to employment become illegal in the near future.
We can be better people, and anyway, bad employers must be called out as well.
Thank you, and to all those that have studied hard to get better skills and still get filtered out by employment agencies to not be put forward for work opportunities; I want your stories also.
We must stop the unfair disadvantages being put upon people who would be great employees immediately before such practices do too much harm. Employers.
If someone has studied to attain more skills, they care about their work – and you know it.
Do not insist on referees as a selection criteria. It is just wrong.
