There's this report from Australian Magazine show Today Tonight in November of 2011 highlighting how overseas workers are more dedicated to farming jobs than locals.
Then there is this report by The West Australian Newspapers back in April 2010 relating how people are taking high paying jobs in the mining industry then coming back to town to find work but refusing jobs that pay less than $1000 per week.
The issue of Job Snobs was again raised on Channel Ten News during January of 2012. This time claiming the government is having to import foreign workers because Aussies are "either too good or too lazy to clean toilets".
Whilst there may be an element of truth in all these reports, my extensive experience of what it's like to be unemployed and applying for almost any job you think you can do, suggests that employers are also partly to blame for being Employee Snobs. They won't hire just anyone.
A quick look through any job classified section, you'll notice job after job, all with one requirement in common, experience preferred. Even on jobs that you can learn in a couple of days practical work, like cleaning toilets, employers look for people who've done the job before.
Channel Ten's report seemed to roll the two previous reports into one saying that Aussie's were turning down jobs in Hospitality in favor of high paying mining jobs, thus requiring the government to import overseas workers. Which flies in the face of saying Aussie workers are too lazy.
However some of the jobs the report said were being filled by foreign workers included; cleaners, waiters, bar staff, kitchen hands, cooks and trolley collectors. Other than trolley collector, all of those positions typically require some type of training. I don't know of any unskilled, unemployed person that has even a remote chance of getting a cook's position without some training. Yet employers always list experienced preferred when advertising those positions.
There's a good chance that employers are hiring overseas workers because there's a shortage of people in this country with the skill set they require, therefore there's a need to import skills.
In my opinion there is a whole group of unskilled, unemployed people who are overlooked by employers because they aren't willing to train workers from scratch. They want people who can step into a job and be across it almost straight away.
Sure there may be some people who can afford to be Job Snobs but it's unfair to suggest employers aren't getting any applications for their vacancies. I've applied for plenty of cleaning jobs in my day (and I've even had training to clean toilets) and still missed out on the job.
Many employers lack the vision of training an unskilled person, who is likely to become a loyal worker to the company that gave them their first chance at a real job.