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A British expat has spoken out about an “unfair” aspect of Australia’s workplace laws that led to her missing out on $40,000 worth of entitlements while her colleagues got paid.
Laura Denby moved to Australia from England six years ago on a working holiday visa before landing a job as an IT business analyst a year later.
Having worked at the same Sydney IT firm – Xam Consulting – for five years, the company was sponsoring Denby’s skilled visa application for permanent residency.
Denby said she lodged her permanent residency application around September 2023 and was busy making plans with her partner to buy a house and start a family, once the visa was granted.
But all her carefully laid plans came apart 12 months later, when Xam Consulting suddenly went into liquidation in September last year.
“We didn’t have any clue it was going to happen,” Denby said.
Denby said the first she and the company’s other 60-to-100 staff members heard about the business going under was when they were called into a meeting with liquidators.
“It was very sudden, to say the least,” she said.
It was at this meeting that employees were told of their rights under the federal government’s Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme.
The last resort, safety-net scheme guarantees Australian citizens, permanent residents, and a very limited number of visa holders will still get unpaid wages, redundancy pay, and other entitlements when businesses go bust.
After doing her research on the scheme, Denby said she realised that, as a temporary skilled visa holder, she was ineligible to get any entitlements under the scheme.
“Honestly, I was gutted, it just put me in a really financially hard place,” she said.
Denby said she was one of a handful of temporary workers at the company put in the same situation.
In Denby’s case, the entitlements she would have received had she been a permanent resident amounted to about $40,000.
Meanwhile, Denby said she had kept in touch with her other colleagues, who had all since been paid out under the scheme.
Left without an income, Denby said the stress took its toll.
“I wasn’t earning any money and I just signed on a new lease at my apartment, which I couldn’t afford to break,” she said.
“I was actually that stressed that I ended up getting really sick, and I went to the doctors and got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.”
Thankfully, Denby was able to find a new job through a contact from her old company, about a month later.
However, Denby said she was moved to speak out about her experience because it was so unfair on migrants like herself, who had been contributing to the Australian economy for years.
“As a skilled worker, we have to sign a form to say we’re a resident for tax purposes …. but then we’re not receiving any entitlements when times fall tough on us,” she said.
“Migrant workers contribute to Australia’s economy but are excluded from the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG) scheme. If their employer becomes insolvent, they receive no support. This is unfair and needs to change.
“Their exclusion discriminates against individuals who are in the process of becoming full-fledged members of the Australian workforce,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations told 9news.com.au that migrant workers were entitled to be paid any owed employee entitlements in priority to other unsecured creditors “provided funds are available in the insolvent estate”.
Migrant workers could also be paid ahead of secured creditors from the proceeds of certain types of assets), the spokesperson said.
Denby said her employer going bust had set back her in other ways, including in her bid for permanent residency.
The IT worker was forced to withdraw her visa application when the company went into liquidation.
While her new company was now sponsoring her, Denby said she was now back at the start of an 18-month queue.