Hospitality industry hopes 457 visa changes will solve skills shortage

The hospitality industry is calling for a loosening of short-term 457 visa rules, amid complaints fewer foreign student arrivals and a slowdown in skilled migration are deepening the sector’s skills shortage.

Restaurant and Catering Australia chief executive officer John Hart says current requirements for bringing in skilled workers are too onerous and time-consuming for small businesses.

The requirements include having 20% of staff undertaking training before a business is allowed to bring in a foreign worker, and being able to demonstrate financial viability.

Hart says the tests are “fundamentally irrelevant” for small businesses.

Hart says there are also difficulties hiring qualified chefs and cooks. “The English language requirements make it very difficult for anyone other than native-speakers,” he tells SmartCompany.

“That’s an issue because most of us as consumers don’t like English food; we like Chinese, Thai, Italian, Greek – and these people aren’t native English speakers.”

Restaurant and Catering Australia would like to see exemptions to the 457 visa program similar to those granted to the mining industry, which faces no quota limit on how many workers it brings in.

Bringing a worker to Australia on a 2-3 year 457 visa takes close to a year for tourism and hospitality operators.

“The activities that a business would undertake is applying for sponsorship, then finding a person, then matching their qualifications,” Hart says.

“That whole process could take around 12 months, as for a small business none of them are going be on the priority processing list.”

The comments come as the federal government canvasses the views of the industry on how to best meet its labour shortage.

Immigration Minister Martin Ferguson says there are already 36,000 vacancies in this industry. “By 2015, another 56,000 workers will be required, particularly in regional areas.”

A discussion paper released by the government asks the industry for ideas on how they would fix the situation and follows a roundtable on tourism employment hosted by Mr Ferguson last August.

The discussion paper is open for comment until March 16. It seeks views from stakeholders on what occupations should be eligible, appropriate minimum salaries, skill levels and English language requirements.

The government has taken steps to simplify the process. In November 2011, it released a targeted guide to the 457 program for the tourism and hospitality industries.