SOUTH Australia's biggest private hospital group has been warned it could be banned from hiring foreign medical staff after a Tanzanian nurse was sacked for being pregnant.
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship said it could also cancel the Adelaide Community Healthcare Alliance's existing sponsorship rights under the 457 temporary work visa program if the woman, Joan Katula, is found to have been unfairly dismissed.
The move follows the revelation in The Weekend Australian on Saturday that Ms Katula, 28, had her visa sponsorship revoked and was allegedly told to leave the country on the next available flight after she reported for work pregnant at The Memorial Hospital in north Adelaide.
The case is set to intensify concern about flaws in the temporary worker program introduced to ease Australia's skills shortage. Overseas-trained nurses are in demand given the general shortage of medical staff.
Following the failure of mediation with Healthscope Hospitals, the country's second-largest private health provider and the contracted manager of The Memorial, Ms Katula took her complaint of discrimination to the South Australian Equal Opportunity Tribunal. Healthscope said Ms Katula's sacking was regrettable, but insisted it had no choice when the time off she would have needed to give birth potentially put her and the company in breach of the 457 rules.
The Immigration Department has contradicted aspects of the company's explanation about why Ms Katula was fired the day she started work at The Memorial on August 15.
A spokesman said the department was monitoring the case.
"If the Equal Opportunity Tribunal finding is that Ms Katula was unfairly dismissed, the department may take action, either to bar the Adelaide Community Healthcare Alliance from access to the subclass 457 program, or cancel its existing sponsorship, or both," he said.
No one was available to comment yesterday from the hospital group. Healthscope general manager for employee relations John Douglas, who has been involved in negotiations over the Katula case, has said the company was put in an impossible situation by inflexible rules covering the minimum salary level of 457 staff.
Conditions for 457 workers can vary sharply from industrial award norms in Australia. In the case of maternity benefits, most Australian workers are entitled to up to 12 months' unpaid leave, plus an element of paid leave.
Immigration agrees that unpaid leave of this duration would conflict with the minimum salary requirements of the 457 visa.
The department's spokesman said the minimum salary level requirement under the program was $43,440, while the average salary for registered nurses in Australia was $70,000. On a salary of $70,000, a 457 visa holder could notionally take nearly five months of unpaid leave without breaching the minimum salary level requirement.
However, the spokesman pointed out that the department was reluctant to allow 457 visa holders more than three months' unpaid leave because they generally did not have access to social security and Medicare benefits.
The Immigration spokesman said the company could have sponsored Ms Katula for permanent migration.
Mr Douglas said the company had no choice but to revoke her sponsorship.
Ms Katula has since found a new sponsor in Victor Harbor.source
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