N.B. Labour Minister Says Private Sector Shouldn’t Worry About SEED Changes
FREDERICTON – Minister Trevor Holder, who is responsible for post-secondary education, training and labour (PETL) in New Brunswick, says private sector employers can still access students even though the Student Employment Experience Development (SEED) program is now closed to them.
“What I would say is this, there is help for employers to meet their challenges and demands. And if there’s a fit for them and that may involve a student at some point, so be it,” he said. “But it would be based on what their needs are, and WorkingNB offices will be working with them to meet those demands.”
Last week, Holder announced changes to the program that would cut the number of placements by approximately 200, and limit the types of employers to First Nations, municipalities, and non-profit groups.
The program will also move away from a lottery system of vouchers directly offered to students, and instead will allow MLAs to recommend employers for 22 placements each in their riding.
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Holder says there are other programs in place, like FutureReadyNB, to help employers in the private sector.
“We are very much committed to FutureReady and experiential learning and we will continue to make investments in that, and continue to work with the private sector to make some investments in experiential learning,” he said. “The other thing is, we have created a lot more flexibility around our new Working NB offices.”
In November last year, Holder announced the Workplace Connections fund, which is administered by WorkingNB and replaces programs like One-Job Pledge, the Workforce Expansion Program and the Youth Employment Fund.
At the time, Holder said the $120 million invested into those programs would be transferred to the new fund, with an aim to allow more flexibility in its administration.
He said rolling all the money into one pool will allow for more tailored solutions to the workforce challenges in New Brunswick’s different regions, instead of trying to fit people into specific programs.
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In addition, a program to fund summer jobs in provincial parks, public libraries and museums that was announced in early 2018 remains in place.
Still, SEED placements has been decreasing. In February 2018, the provincial government announced additional investment to boost SEED placements to 2,000 jobs. That has since decreased to 1,400 and, with the latest changes, to 1,200.
The decrease this time is due to a shift in focus to non-profit organizations, municipalities and First Nation communities, Holder said. The program used to fund 50 per cent of the cost of hiring a student and the private employer funds the remainder.
“It’s more costly when you put the entire focus on the non-profit sector, so that’s why you saw the decrease from around 1,400 to 1,200,” Holder said.
Now, the government will subsidize 100 per cent of the student’s minimum wage for 35 hours a week, for up to 12 weeks, for non-profit organizations and First Nation community. For municipalities, the province will take care of half of the minimum wage.
The change also means the private sector, including startups and small businesses, can no longer access SEED. Even with the other available programs, that’s still a lot fewer chances of filling a summer position.
In addition, FutureReadyNB, which was launched last year, is expected to evolve, according to a statement from PETL.
In its first year, FutureReadyNB supported 1,030 university students access experiential learning opportunities offered by 240 employers. More than 60 per cent of the those employers were non-profit organizations, the department said.
Who gets funding through the program is decided on a case-by-case basis, but in its first year, 92 per cent of participating employers’ student jobs were funded fully. The rest were partially or fully funded by the employers themselves.
The number of students accessing the initiative has increased, and will continue to expand as FutureReadyNB has extended its partnerships from just universities to include public community colleges and public high schools. But PETL anticipates employers to fund a larger percentage of these positions as the program evolves and grows in the coming years.
But Holder is confident in the government’s ability to help the private sector with their needs.
“I can tell you any startups out there need to get in touch with Opportunities NB and they should get in touch with our WorkingNB offices, and those two working in tandem together can help them with any challenges they have,” he said.
Holder also defended the move to replace the voucher system and involve MLAs in the process of choosing employers.
“There was a lot of complications with the voucher system,” he said, noting that some non-profit organizations that had hired and invested in a student for one summer weren’t able to bring back the same student because they may not be lucky enough to get a voucher.
“In some rural areas in particular, there might not have been enough students in that general area that receives a voucher for the non-profit organizations in that area to draw upon. And the other thing that made it complicated for the student, was that you could go four years in a post-secondary environment and never be drawn for a voucher,” he added.
With regards to MLAs involvement, Holder said because the government expects a lot of applications, “somebody has to be involved in that decision-making process.”
Employers that apply will still be vetted by the department of PETL. But the qualified ones will then be handed over to MLAs.
“We believe MLAs need to be empowered. They’re elected at the local level, they understand their communities, they’re much more equipped to understand the needs of the community than somebody sitting in an office in PETL in Fredericton,” he said.
Last week, the New Brunswick Student Alliance (NBSA), which represents over 12,000 post-secondary students, expressed opposition to the move and advocated for removing politicians from the selection process altogether. Executive director Kjeld Mizpah Conyers-Steede said involving MLAs politicizes the process.
The NBSA also said it should have been included in the discussion to change the SEED program, and called for the government to create a post-secondary education strategy.
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Holder said a post-secondary education strategy is the next pillar his team will focus on when it comes to addressing labour shortages, as the province expects a need to fill 120,000 jobs in the next decade.
The first pillar was rolling out a population growth strategy that includes increasing the number of immigrants attracted and retained in the province. The second pillar was making wage subsidy programs more flexible by creating the Workplace Connections fund.
“Then the thing that we really want to start focusing on is getting a post-secondary education strategy in this province that, first of all, identifies where we want to go as a province and what we need our post secondary institutions to provide for us, to get us there, help meet our labour market demand, and hopefully close that 120,000 worker gap that we’re going to have over the next 10 years,” he said.
He says his team plans to ensure the strategy development will be “properly facilitated” and give New Brunswickers a say.
“We want to engage students, we want to engage administrators, we want to engage the faculty associations, we want to engage the private sector and the business community in that conversation as well,” he said. “Everyone right across the board has to step out of the comfort zone, from government to citizens to students to folks within the university system and colleges as well, both public and private.”