Should some jobs not be outsourced? Skydiving instructors think so

Are there some jobs that shouldn’t be outsourced to foreign workers? How about a skydiving instructor?

Foreign workers filling that role has become a flashpoint between the skydivers’ union and Australia’s biggest skydiving company.

Workers at Experience Co, which operates Skydive Australia, walked off the job at jump sites across the east coast last week over a deal that would pay visa workers less than the company’s full-time employees.

The Australian Workers’ Union, which represents the skydivers, said Experience Co is also applying for permission to bring in overseas workers to fill out the ranks of its employees.

Unionised tandem skydiving instructors were grounded from Friday until Monday night across Illawarra, Noosa, Yarra Valley, St Kilda, and Barwon Heads, which are among the company’s 10 drop zones. The union is also upset that Experience Co has ended its local training program, which would prepare a new generation of local skydiving instructors.

“We do see companies that think that you don’t have to pay to train your staff here and you can get them from overseas and you can reduce your labour cost,” AWU National Organiser Jonathan Cook said.

Experience Co CEO John O’Sullivan says the union is unfairly conflating ongoing enterprise bargaining with the issue of foreign workers.

He cites a global shortage of skydiving instructors, which he says prompted Experience Co to apply to the federal government for a labour agreement to allow the company to hire 15 instructors per year for three years.

O’Sullivan said the plan isn’t to replace Australian staff, but it’s necessary because there are currently a number of staff on working holidaymaker and student visas, which will expire over the next 12 to 18 months. “And they have asked us to sponsor them to come into the country”.

“Opposition to the Labour Agreement is actually reducing our capacity,” said O’Sullivan. “We are unable to service more customers which means that for our existing cohort of skydive instructors, they make less money.”

Expanding the workforce by sponsoring foreign staff on student and working holidaymaker visas would boost capacity, increasing the pace of jumps and putting more money in the pockets of skydivers, O’Sullivan said.

Currently, skydiving instructors earn $57,000 plus an average of about $47 for each jump or video camera service. The company is offering $58,000 plus $50 per jump.

“We have got in front of them a proposition that makes them the best paid skydive instructors in the country,” O’Sullivan said.

Foreign workers earn the $57,000 base but don’t get the extra payment component that the Australians jumpers do. However, O’Sullivan said the company is paying the visa cost for many of the foreign skydiving instructors from countries like Brazil, New Zealand, and parts of Europe.

The AWU’s Cook counters that the visa worker “could be doing the same job as an instructor who might earn $100,000 if the volumes are high”.

Skydivers typically try to work for 1000 jumps a year, which in a busy season with good weather can mean three to four tandem jumps an hour. In practice, this can translate to 18 or so jumps a day at peak season.

The camera adds to the instructors’ income, with a $47 bonus on each jump for each camera, which can be attached to the instructor, the passenger, and the plane. Customers book the camera services 80-90 per cent of the time.

So to earn $100,000 a year, a skydiving instructor would need to make 1100 jumps a year with camera ancillary payments. To earn $70,000 a year, they would need about 800 jumps with camera sales.

“All workers doing the same job should get the same pay. Employee, visa worker, contractor – it should not matter,” Cook said.

The union is also upset at the closure of Experience Co’s two skydiving instruction schools, which could train up local instructors. O’Sullivan says the company is happy to sit down and discuss resurrecting the schools “once we’re through the EBA”.

The ASX-listed company has about 1300 employees, with about 140 skydivers, of whom about 60 are AWU members.

The union said it didn’t even learn about the plan to bring in foreign workers on a lower wage until the government informed it a year ago as part of the labour agreement application.

AWU’s Cook said: “The union is not anti-migration per se, but it has to be done in a collaborative and productive way not just for the sake of profit.”

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