Another week, another report of an Australian employer opting to hire foreign labour on 457 visas rather than employing surplus local workers. From The Canberra Times:
Infrastructure giant Transfield is recruiting temporary migrants to work on some of Australia’s largest electricity networks less than two months after slashing 120 jobs in Victoria.
An entire division of Victorian powerline maintenance workers and apprentices lost their jobs in June as Transfield cited a downturn in work from power distributors including SP Ausnet.
Transfield’s job cuts bring the number of powerline worker redundancies in Victoria to about 400 so far this year…
But overseas recruitment ads are now seeking foreign workers from Britain to fill vacancies in Transfield’s powerline maintenance division in Australia…
“There is a surplus, more than at any other time in decades, of qualified, under-employed line workers in Victoria and interstate that could fill these positions being advertised in the UK,” [Electrical Trade Union state secretary Troy Gray] said.
A former Transfield apprentice in Melbourne, who lost his job in June, said most laid-off Victorian workers would have taken up redeployment options if they had been offered.
“They told us they’d done everything, looked everywhere, but there were no other jobs for us”…
457 visas are supposed to be used only when skilled local workers cannot be found to do the job. But yet again, we find an Australian businesses choosing to hire foreign labour when a plethora of locals are available.
When are Australia’s governments going to end the farce and just admit that the 457 visa program has little to do with resolving skills shortages, which are at “historical lows”, and everything to do with lowering employees’ pay and conditions?
Widespread use of 457 visas makes little sense in the current economic environment. Unemployment/underemployment across Australia is already elevated, and will only rise further over coming years as the mining boom unwinds, the car industry closes, and the housing market turns down.
