Chinese nurses working in Australian aged care under review
The Age newspaper in Melbourne has revealed that Chinese nurses brought to Australia by a nursing agency and working in aged care facilities , could be exploited in terms of payment, work and training opportunities.
Nurse Bank Australia is sending Chinese nurses to work up to 50 hours a week in nursing homes as personal care attendants, while paying them a flat weekly ‘training wage’ rate of $300, in addition to charging them upfront fees for recruitment, employment and training.
Their visas require that they be provided with 12 month, government approved occupational training program with award wages. However, nurses and nursing home staff say the nurses are working unsupervised as Personal Care Attendants.
Nurse Bank says it has offered a ‘nurse educator program’ which enables participants to obtain a Certificate III in aged care and a Certificate IV in training. The program is designed to provide a workforce for Nurse Bank’s planned aged care businesses in China.
The Australian Nursing Federation’s national secretary, Jill Iliffe, has said that the actions of the nursing agency exposed the government’s 442 occupational trainee visa as an “inadequate tool that enables unethical practices by companies to exploit overseas workers and provide them with substandard wages and conditions”.
“These nurses are registered nurses who are not being employed as registered nurses in Australia,” Ms Iliffe said. “Instead of applying for licence as a registered nurse and using their higher level skills these nurses are being employed as personal care assistants. They are being sent to work long hours, unsupervised, on miserable trainee wages while the company makes a tidy profit on the back of their work.”
Ms Iliffe said the 442 visa scheme should be suspended while an independent body investigates the concerns raised by the treatment of the nurses, which is not an isolated incident in the Federation’s experience, and other workers employed under the scheme.
