Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus has called for an end to Australia's uncapped temporary working visa system.
In a speech to the National Press Club, she said: "According to [a] 2016 Senate report, there are 1.4 million visa holders with working rights in Australia."
"That represents about one in 10 workers. That's right, one in 10 workers in the Australian labour force are on temporary work visas."
Ms McManus made the same claim a month earlier, telling ABC's RN Breakfast: "We've got a problem where one in 10 workers are now on temporary work visas."
Is she correct? RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.
Ms McManus's claim is unsubstantiated.
Her claim assumes that all temporary visa holders with the right to work are actually working.
Experts told Fact Check there was no evidence to either support or contradict that assumption, and that they could only speculate on the employment rate of different groups of temporary visa holders.
Unpublished data provided to Fact Check by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) focused on employment rates of temporary migrants, but a number of caveats rendered the information unhelpful for the purpose of this Fact Check.
In looking at each temporary visa category with work rights attached, Fact Check was unable to determine how many temporary visa holders were likely to be working in Australia.
Most temporary visa holders are not required to work while in Australia, and data is not kept on their working habits.
Other data does not separate children from other dependants, making it difficult to determine how many of these temporary visa holders are of working age, as well as how many are choosing to work.
Whether the number of temporary visas being issued by the Government amounted to "a problem" for Australian workers was also contested by the experts.
While the issuing of skilled work visas was often an efficient means of plugging gaps in the Australian labour market, there were also industries in which temporary work visa holders were indeed competing with Australian workers for jobs, they said.
However, where temporary visa holders were allowed to partake in unskilled work they were mostly working in casual and part-time jobs, so were not competing with long-term unemployed Australians looking for full-time work.
This category of visa allows migrants and other foreign visitors to live and work in Australia for a prescribed period of time.
The most commonly referred to of these is the Temporary Skilled Work visa, otherwise known as the 457 visa.
Now abolished, the 457 visa allowed skilled migrants to work in specialty fields in Australia for up to four years.
The visa's replacement, known as the Temporary Skills Shortage visa, consists of short and long-term options, allowing migrants to live and work in Australia for periods up to two or four years.
Other temporary visas grant working rights, although these are not explicitly work visas.
Student, Temporary Graduate and Working Holidayvisas allow foreigners to work in Australia, though Student and Working Holiday visas place restrictions on the amount and type of work that may be undertaken.
Students can only work 40 hours per fortnight during semester (with no restrictions during semester breaks), while holders of working holiday visas may only work in one place for a maximum of six months.
Barring pre-existing health issues or criminal convictions, an additional temporary visa known as a Special Category visa (subclass 444) allows New Zealand citizens to live, work and study in Australia indefinitely.
Visas are further ranked primary or secondary, primary being the temporary visa granted to an applicant and secondary those visas granted to the applicant's partner or dependants.
Work restrictions are not placed on secondary visa holders.
A spokesperson for the ACTU told Fact Check that Ms McManus's claim was based on data from a Federal Government submission to the 2016 Senate Inquiry into the Exploitation of Temporary Visa Workers.
That submission, based on Department of Home Affairs data, found there were 1.88 million people holding temporary visas in Australia in March 2015, of which approximately 1.4 million carried work rights.
The submission listed 457s, Student, Temporary Graduate, New Zealand and Working Holiday visas as having work rights attached.
Visa CategoryPrimarySecondaryTotal New Zealand visa holders 648,993 0 648,993 Student visa holders 361,742 51,381 413,123 Temporary graduate visa holders 18,220 4,801 23,021 Temporary skilled (457) visa holders 106,755 86,403 193,158 Working holiday maker visa holders 160,275 0 160,275 Total 1,295,985 142,585 1,438,570* Secondary visas do not apply to New Zealand and working holiday categories.
Source: A National Disgrace: The Exploitation of Temporary Work Visa Holders (page 15)
The ACTU spokesperson explained that by dividing the 1.4 million temporary visas by the the total number of people employed in Australia during the same period, the ACTU reasoned that 11.99 per cent of working people would be temporary visa holders.
That figure equates to around one in 10 workers.
However, it assumes that all temporary visa holders were employed.
The latest available data on temporary visa holders dates back to December 2016.
Applying the same logic as above, this more recent data likewise supports the claim that more than one in 10 workers — 11.18 per cent, in fact — are temporary visa holders.
Source: Temporary entrants in Australia at 31 December 2016 (Page 3)
The basis for Ms McManus's claim assumes all 1.4 million temporary visa holders with work rights are employed, despite there being no evidence to support this.
Fact Check asked the Australian Bureau of Statistics for data regarding the labour force and temporary visa holders.
A spokesperson pointed to the bureau's report Characteristics of Recent Migrants, which gives a breakdown of migrant numbers, including the number of temporary residents in Australia as at December 2016.
However, the figures do not show the number of temporary visa holders with the right to work in Australia.
The ABS also provided Fact Check with unpublished data from its Survey of Qualifications and Work (2015-16), which showed migrants on temporary visas accounted for just 1.9 per cent of all employed people in Australia — far below Ms McManus' claim of more than 10 per cent.
The survey put the total number of temporary visa holders in Australia with working rights at 368,500 (roughly the same as the number of student visa holders listed in the Department of Home Affairs data from the same period).
The survey estimated that 62 per cent of these visa holders (228,200) had jobs.
Much of the discrepancy can be attributed to New Zealand citizens not being counted as temporary visa holders in the survey, and that it was conducted in December when many students would have left the country.
But the ABS spokesperson pointed to a number of other caveats as well.
"To be in the in-scope population for the labour force survey you first have to be a civilian resident in Australia; that is, have lived in Australia for 12 months or more, or intend to live in Australia for 12 months or more," the spokesperson said.
"There are a number of people on temporary visas who may be employed but who do not meet this requirement."
The spokesperson added that to be included in the survey, people also must normally live in a private dwelling.
"It's possible, therefore, that highly mobile populations or populations that may disproportionately live in non-private dwellings — such as working holidaymakers — may be under-represented in these survey results."
Bottom line: it would appear to be impossible to determine with accuracy the employment rate of temporary visa holders.
This article was originally published on www.abc.net.au. Read the original article.
