Bill F.
As
predicted when the 457 visa was introduced by the Howard Liberal government, this
system is now working as a tool to replace Australian resident workers with
lower paid temporary foreign workers.
Brought
in as ‘skilled’ workers under the pretence that no local workers are available
in that particular trade, the foreign workers are often placed in different
jobs altogether, on low wages and with a minimum of working conditions.
Many
are tricked by promises of top dollar and permanent residency in Australia. For
some, most of their pay goes straight back to the employer who rents out
squalid accommodation.
If
they complain, or look to a union for help, they are threatened with the sack.
Without a job and a reference from an employer, they can be deported at short
notice.
They
are harshly exploited and abused by greedy bosses, and deserve our sympathy and
solidarity.
Bosses
are systematically using the 457 visa system to avoid paying the legal rates laid
down in awards and enterprise agreements, and to undermine hard-won working
conditions across whole industries. While the profit incentive is always in the
forefront of their thinking, there is also the longer term ideological
objective of disrupting and weakening trade union organisation.
When
unemployed workers set up a picket line in Werribee last month against the use
of imported 457 visa workers on the site, it further exposed the myth that no
qualified local workers were available.
On
March 7, more than 1,000 workers rallied against 457 visa rorts such as this.
They marched from the Victorian Trades Hall to Parliament House. On arrival
they gave the new Premier Napthine and his government a bit of stick for
proposing the cities of Geelong and Bendigo be classified as special 457
employment zones – cities with already above average levels of unemployment.
Speakers
at the rally which was chaired by Victorian Trades Hall Secretary Brian Boyd,
were Steve Dargavel AMWU state Secretary, Dave Noonan, CFMEU Construction and
General National Secretary and Leigh Diehm, AMWU Assistant state Secretary.
All
speakers expressed their anger and disgust at accusations by Tony Abbott that
union opposition to 457 visas was racist and selfish. They pointed out the
positive role of migrant workers in building Australia and its multicultural
society, as well as their contributions to the working class movement.
Dave
Noonan spoke of the assistance his union had provided to a 457 visa holder who
became seriously sick and was sacked by his boss. No longer ‘legally’ in the
country, the hospitals refused to treat him. If not for the union, he would
have been deported right away.
It’s
more than just cleaning up the rorts, the whole 457 visa system should be scrapped
and proper training and qualifications provided for workers in the areas where
skill shortages are emerging. Cutbacks to TAFE have to be reversed before
Australia really does become the ‘banana republic’ that Keating said we could
avoid by scrapping tariffs and de-regulating the economy!
The
key issue is the global domination of corporate imperialism, which promotes the
use of temporary mobile workforces and condemns them to semi-slave labour to
cut costs and weaken the resistance of the working class, in Australia and
across the world.
Recognition
of imperialism and struggle against its schemes is true internationalism.
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