It has been revealed that McDonald’s and its franchisees were paid up to $72 million under the former Coalition government’s Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements (BAC) program to train its staff.
The BAC program aimed to help the post-pandemic recovery, but it has come under criticism from Labor MPs, unions, and former staff of fast food companies, who have questioned whether taxpayers should be giving money to profitable companies to help them with their staff training and whether the training provided was of good quality.
Collectively, McDonald’s restaurants claimed over 8,000 trainees and had a 53% completion rate. Most of the training was for Certificate III in retail, which the company’s in-house trainer provided.
Restaurants could claim up to $28,000 annually for each employee in training under the BAC program.
A total of 226 McDonald’s franchisees used the program and received $11 million in subsidies, according to Freedom of Information documents obtained by The AFR.
Retail and Fast Food Workers Union secretary Josh Cullinan lashed the BAC program, claiming that it lavished taxpayer subsidies to a multinational giant for basic on-the-job training it would have needed to provide anyway.
“It has minimal value in further studies or further work”, he said. “It is not like they are entitled to a higher rate of pay for getting those accreditations”.
“It beggars belief a company that made over a $1 billion to return to its American parent would be getting public funding for these programs”, said Cullinan.
For its part, McDonald’s said in a statement that it was pleased to have helped 4,297 staff members complete their training while receiving support from the BAC program.
“McDonald’s Australia has a long and proven history of providing excellent training and development opportunities to our employees, investing more than $60 million each year, together with our franchisees”, it said.
The 2020 federal budget under the former Coalition government also included the $4 billion JobMaker Hiring Credit, which incentivised Australian businesses to employ additional young workers aged between 16 and 35 years old.
JobMaker was paid at the rate of $200 per week for those under 30 and $100 per week for those aged between 30-35 who worked at least 20 hours a week.
Major retailers such as Coles and Woolworths and fast food chains like McDonald’s were the primary beneficiaries because of their large workforces of young Australians.
Is anyone surprised that large businesses abused these programs by shifting their wage costs to taxpayers while boosting their dividends and profits?
A sceptic would say that the underlying intent of these schemes was for the Coalition to throw taxpayer subsidies at its businessmates.
