Australian PM Targets Imported IT Workers 224
beaverdownunder writes "A debate 'down under' has started to rage surrounding the importation of 'temporary' IT workers on so-called 457 visas, with the Prime Minister promising to bring in tough new restrictions on foreign workers in a pre-election pledge, despite evidence that there are insufficient numbers of Australians to fill the skills gap. Some quarters argue the foreign workers are necessary to drive growth in Australia's IT industry, while others have cited examples where large Australian companies have imported workers needlessly, displacing qualified Aussie personnel."
Thats what you get. (Score:1, Insightful)
When you teach your kids to be Tradies.
Deal with it.
Just a desperate PM (Score:5, Insightful)
Import the workers or offshore the jobs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether or not there is a shortage of native IT workers in Australia, companies could potentially switch to off shoring the jobs if the government prevents importing of workers.
Temporary transfers too (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, this is going to be an extra-large shit for us, where me spending 2 years in Norway at head office was significantly easier than bringing people over here for 6 months at a time for skills exchange. HR tells me that Australia is the hardest country in the world they've tried to give people "bridge the world" temporary transfers to. Insular much?
International Competition Vs Cost of Living (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree, I think software companies would love to pay a competitive salary, as long as ALL of their competitors are paying it too. Your problem is that your competition is now international, and Australia has a very high cost of living. In the late 1990's the internet hadn't properly taken hold in CEO's brains so your competition for software was still mostly domestic (international companies like Microsoft, IBM, etc were the exception).
Politicians don't seem to get is whilst high tech jobs are the future, they're not subject to the same geographical constraints that low tech jobs like farming are. Why would a company want to pay an Australian developer a high rate of pay when he can pay an Indian developer a lower wage and the Indian guy gets to live in the lap of luxury? Why would a company or consumer want to buy software developed in Australia, when Indian, American or European software can be bought cheaper over the net? (Region locks have plusses and minuses in this case)
The causes of the high cost of living needs to be tackled, but this is probably going to involve low-skilled immigration and they've sealed that exit off.
Re:Import the workers or offshore the jobs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies could potentially switch to off shoring the jobs whether the government does everything, nothing, or any point in between.
The only way to prevent that is to make labour and production as cheap, disposable, exploitable and polluting everywhere as it is in the worst country in the world.
Do you want to keep arguing the point, or just shush up now?
Re: Just a desperate PM (Score:4, Insightful)
What happened to the new careers in IT? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a teenager, we were encouraged to study engineering and computing. IT jobs were sold to us as genuine careers. So we spent our four plus years at uni only to find that outsourcing is the new black, and all our study is for naught. Thanks.
More accurately (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like the BS about US corporations whining they desperately need more H1B visas, this is about increasing profits by replacing living wage jobs with the modern IT equivalent of indebtured servants; compliant, desperate folks willing to work way too hard for pennies on the pound / dollar. And if they ask for a raise or complain about 60-hour work weeks? DEPORTED.
I've seen both sides of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I've been on both sides of this as I've been to Australia three different times for work (but not with the visa they talk about). When I was brought in I was brought in because they had fewer than 10 people in the entire country that were certified to do what I was doing at the time (there were only a few hundred total worldwide). There well and truly was a shortage of the skills they were looking for and they could not have possibly met that need in country.
Cases like mine are the exception though, and most visas issued for workers to come in and perform IT work are issued to avoid hiring native workers. Someone who is working on a visa is much more likely to be able to be pressed to work additional free hours, won't have costs like retirement and is really easy to get rid of if you don't want them anymore. In short they are viewed as disposable workers that do more at less cost.
There is a relatively easy and balanced fix for these problems (it's a problem when large quantities of natives can't get work and your importing people to work). If you really want to measure if there is actually a shortage of workers for a given field all you have to do is monitor average pay and benefits for native workers. If there is a genuine shortage you will see pay and benefits rise accordingly (market dynamics). When average pay and benefits rise to a certain level you allow for more visas to be issued. This avoids a hard cap while allowing for genuine shortages to be addressed without decimating native workers careers.
I also think you should allow people who come in like this to stay for a limited number of years with a fast track for citizenship. If they don't obtain their citizenship after X years they return home. /Loved Australia
Re:Shortage is NOT the Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
This depends upon what you call competitive. If your competition is only within your borders, then you have a level playing field. When you go global, you're suddenly competing with people who don't have the same overhead, standards of living, taxes, etc., etc. So, the question for all nations to answer is if they're willing to forsake jobs for their own people, increasing unemployment, though benefiting corporations, by lowering their costs, but also driving down salaries for those still employed within their borders. It's an issue that should be agreed to at a national level.
This kills me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I hear people whining about a "skills shortage" I call bullshit. There's no "skills shortage", there's a "people who will work for low wages" shortage. If companies wanted to hire domestic workers, they could, they just don't want to. They love it when supply-and-demand benefits them, but when the workers try to do the same thing (salaries go up when the demand for the skills goes up), well, we can't have that, can we. Those executives might have to forgo that second vacation home or have to settle for a BMW instead of a Bentley.
Re: No, they haven't (Score:2, Insightful)
You might want to find out which UN treaty you're talking about and actually read it. Pay particular attention to the word "directly"
Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees [unhcr.org]
"1. The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence."
Australia doesn't get a lot of refugees coming from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, the Philippines or New Zealand.
What's more, it is, in fact, illegal and the convention calls it illegal on more than one occasion. Contracting states are, however, forbidden to penalize people who enter illegally provided they present themselves to the authorities promptly.