The ACS yesterday said the government had “misplaced” its energies following last week’s passing of new law that claims to tighten the use of 457 visas to fill skill shortages in Australia with overseas workers.
Earlier this year, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor made a point of highlighting the vulnerability of IT jobs in Australia to being filled by imported labour.
“It is just not acceptable that information technology jobs, the quintessential jobs of the future, the very opportunities being created by the digital economy, precisely where the big picture is for our kids, should be such a big area of imported skills,'' Ms Gillard told an told an Australian Council of Trade Unions summit in March.
Mr O'Connor had said that in the IT sector, vacancies for IT workers was falling yet grants for 457 visas had risen 68 per cent.
Whether the IT industry gains a benefit from the new 457 visa requirement that companies conduct market labour testing before seeking employees from overseas, is now disputed on several levels.
The first is concern that Australian IT workers haven’t been offered the same level of protection in the new Migration Amendment (Temporary Sponsored Visas) Act as nurses, engineers and blue collar workers – despite being cited as prime beneficiaries.
Companies cannot be exempted from first seeking an Australian citizen or permanent resident when advertising for qualified nurses and engineers.
But IT job areas that require a Bachelor's degree and five years' experience, or an associate degree or diploma under the Australian Qualifications Framework or three years' experience, can be exempted from labour market testing by a ministerial decree in future. Jobs wouldn't need to be advertised.
Green's MP Adam Bandt told The Australian this week that there wouldn't have been 75 votes supporting the 457 Bill in the House of Representatives had full protection been extended to the IT industry.
He said he had proposed the measure, but it had been dropped during confidential discussions between the Federal Government and cross benchers on the final form of the legislation.
“It would have preferable to enshrine protections for IT workers in law in the same way nurses, engineers and semi-skilled workers now enjoy them,'' Mr Bandt told The Australian on Monday.
Yesterday The Australian Computer Society said the focus on protecting ICT jobs by tightening 457 visa requirements had been misplaced, as the number of undergraduates studying ICT in Australia had dramatically declined and there was a skills shortage.
Ten years ago, more than 10,000 students chose to study ICT at university, currently only 4500 students were enrolled in Australian ICT undergraduate courses yet jobs have grown by more than 100,000 in the sector, ACS head of Policy and External Affairs, Adam Redman said.
He said there was a growth of 20,000 jobs in ICT this year.
Mr Redman said there was a perception, particularly among parents of students, that ICT was no longer a profitable career for their children, in light of their view that jobs were going to cheaper-paid foreign workers.
He said the collapse of the dotcom boom in 2000-1 had left its mark on this generation of parents as to the viability of IT as a career.
Adding to this was a huge dropout rate by those in IT courses, especially among women. Participation also worked against older Australians.
“Significantly, fewer than 50 per cent of ICT graduates typically become employed as ICT professionals, despite this being a principal goal of nearly all ICT tertiary courses, and despite a continuing ICT skills shortage in Australia,” Mr Redman said.
He said up to 43 per cent of all ICT students dropped out of their undergraduate course with a large population of females within this group citing course content and teaching as their major concern.
“The equation is: not enough students studying ICT + participation barriers to women and older workers = not enough domestic skills supply for businesses as they increasingly need to go online, hence skilled migration as a short-medium term measure,” Mr Redman told The Australian.
He said the number of ICT higher education enrollments as a percentage of total higher education enrollments continued to decline, and ICT was now one of the bottom two general discipline areas for attracting high achieving school leavers -- those with an ATAR score above 90, into tertiary study.
He said the skills shortage in ICT was threatening Australia’s digital economy with the ICT industry and profession contributing almost 8 per cent of GDP. He said inadequate digital literacy was significantly hampering enterprise growth.
Industry meanwhile is grappling with the new requirements for labour market testing in the 457 visa amendment law.
The Australian Information Industry Association representing employers in the ICT sector has yet to comment, saying it was still studying the 457 legislation.
IT firms too are reticent to reveal whether they have engaged staff on 457 visas, with HP, Qantas, and Google among firms not prepared to confirm whether they used them, and how many.
Fujitsu Australia has around 50 people out of 4300 workers in Australia on 457 visas, said CEO Mike Foster.
Mr Foster said Fujitsu didn't rely much on the 457 visa scheme as it had many government clients which require Australian citizenship and security clearance.
Safeguarding local jobs through legislation is a complex issue. Should firms decide not to proceed with 457 visa applications, corporations have the option to outsource jobs offshore, especially those requiring less skills or experience that can be treated as commodities. International companies also can transfer jobs to a branch in another country rather than bring workers to Australia.
Federal government statistics generally show a 6.8 per cent rise in 457 visas with 61,480 granted from July 2012 to the end of April, but the ACS says a low number of these (7.2 per cent) are in the ICT sector.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Chris Griffith; Additional reporting: Fran Foo
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 04.07.2013
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