The CFMEU is contemporary Australia’s foremost anti-migrant organisation.
As part of the election campaign, the union, some of whose officials have been subject to criminal investigations and penalties for workplace corruption and intimidation, begin a million dollar anti-457 visa campaign.
The campaign includes free-to-air network advertisements, billboards in marginal Labor seats and logistical assistance to Labor members in Corangamite, La Trobe, Deakin in Victoria.
Reportedly other seats receiving assistance are Solomon in NT, Capricornia, Flynn and Dawson in Queensland, Braddon and Bass in Tasmania, a plethora of western Sydney seats and even Hasluck in WA held by Federal Parliament’s only Indigenous MP.
The CFMEU certainly has a very busy American Express card!
One of the ads asks rhetorically: “Why, Mr Abbott, would you give jobs to temporary overseas workers instead of looking for local workers first?”
Of course, under the 457 work visa scheme, Mr Abbott does not any give jobs to any temporary migrants. Employers sponsor visa applicants, not governments, employ migrants.
Employers have to be approved to be a sponsor as reputable and viable. Then the nominated position has to be approved. Only a relatively few skilled occupations are actually listed as acceptable by the Minister of the day.
Market testing for skills shortages is built into this much-misrepresented visa scheme, requiring the listed occupations are indeed in critical and short supply. Furthermore, the applicants’ pay is often required to be higher than market rates; have proof of relevant qualifications and have English language capacity.
The CFMEU has just been successful in campaigning for greater market requiring many businesses to provide evidence of advertisements seeking suitable locals.
Furthermore, employers are subject to vigorous oversight by the Department of Immigration and Fair Work Australia. The penalties for exploiting 457 visa holders are stiff.
In fact, it begs the question: why would use the scheme at all given the red-tape involved.
The answer is they have to because there are genuine skills shortages in Australia despite the rising unemployment from 4 per cent in 2008 to about 5.7 per cent in 2013.
The CFMEU does not tell the public that most 457 visa holders are professionals helping our high tech industries and our hospitals.
Its campaign deliberately leaves the impression temporary migrant workers are stealing local jobs; it is a campaign preying on the ignorance and apprehension. It seeks to create heat and prejudice without shedding any light into the complexity of Australia’s sponsored work visa program.
Many of the members of Australia’s most militant union – the Construction Forestry Mining & Energy Union (CFMEU) – are proud to to ex-appropriate the much-loved Eureka Stockade blue-and-white flag, as a symbol of solidarity and resistance.
That flag is a symbol of a miners’ rebellion on Ballarat’s goldfields in 1854. Led by mostly migrants, blood was shed for a fair go to access mining licenses. As a emblem, that Southern Cross belongs to all Australians, including prospective Australians seeking legal pathways towards permanent residency and citizenship. It represents a fair-go and integrity.
The CFMEU’s integrity-deficit leadership tramp all over the Eureka Stockade with its grubby xenophobic campaign against 457 visas. They are conducting the most intellectually challenged tactics since Pauline Hanson’s 1998 election tilt.
If those incumbent Labor MPs have any standards themselves, they would refuse the CFMEU’s tainted assistance.