QUEENSLAND'S largest train building project – the $4.4 billion New Generation Rolling Stock Project - has been accused of favouring imported Indian workers over skilled Australian workers.
A Queensland rail draftsmen with 20 years' experience claim they are being rejected, alleging employees from India are being employed for 12 months after coming to Australia for three weeks training.
The tender for the complex project – to design 75 six-car electric trains, to build the new trains, then build a new maintenance plant at Wulkuraka, and finally maintain the new trains for 30 years – was won by the Bombardier Consortium in January 2014.
Bombardier denies the allegations and says staff from India are coming as observers only and not staying.
Bombardier has bought a new rail construction plant in India, at Savli - where the new trains will be built during 2015-2018 - then shipped back to Queensland and steadily introduced to the Queensland rail network.
Bombardier has two workforces; the first of around 200 at Wulkuraka near Ipswich where the maintenance centre is being built, and then Bombardier's headquarters at Milton where new trains are being designed.
At Wulkuraka about 87 per cent are local employees, Bombardier said on Wednesday.
At Milton the project's mechanical designers and engineer numbers have grown from 64 to "over 200".
However Bombardier could not say how many staff at their Milton office were locals.
Two experienced mechanical design experts question how many of these new design and engineering jobs are being filled by Australians.
They say the proportion of Indian draftsmen have increased to 75 per cent of the design team at Milton.
Brisbane's Luis Ordonez and a second mechanical design expert who asked to stay anonymous say Bombardier brought in Indian draftsmen for three weeks for electronic drafting training, and then appointed them to the design team.
The design specialist – who worked at Bombardier's Milton office for 12 months – said in his time 75 per cent of the people hired were from India and 25 per cent from elsewhere.
"They came from India and were basically being trained on the program that Bombardier use, which is CATIA," the man said.
"They are actually draftsman, but they weren't actually trained on the program. They wanted to teach them the program and then go back to India.
"But they are not only training them, but they are doing the skill work on the train development itself.
"There were quite a few of them; there were at least 75 per cent of them were Indian workers, compared to Australian workers.
"It is not only draftsmen, it is across the board. It's engineers as well.
"The ones that I was working with have been here for at least 12 months."
The man said the people did not go home after finishing their training.
The man said he was astonished that experienced rail design people he knew were not getting interviews.
"I don't know the political side of it, but it was pretty amazing to me that they wouldn't employ these people that had this previous experience."
Luis Ordonez's home office includes certificates of excellence for bus design from Brisbane's Lord Mayor Graham Quirk and from the Institute of Engineers for the Great Southern Express train's design team.
Mr Ordonez said he had designed "the exact same train model" for EDI Rail in Maryborough, producing a three-dimensional model of that new train, "that consisted of 300,000 parts".
"I could have been planted in and modelled my portion of the train, with maybe a refresher course in the software," he said.
"But that would have just been a two-to-three week refresher. I could have just hit the ground running," he said.
He said he became bewildered when he could not get an interview after being asked five separate times by a recruitment firm to apply for a designer's job at the project.
He said at that stage the recruitment firm apologised and said they "had no idea what was going on".
"He said we've been putting forward people with a lot more experience than you and they have been knocked back as well," Mr Ordonez said.
Mr Ordonez said he was told by the recruitment agency they were putting forward "three or four resumes at a time."
"And all of us were getting knocked back," he said.
Mr Ordonez said when people with extensive experience in rail design at the nationwide rail engineering firm United Goninan Limited were rejected, he began complaining to local politicians.
Bombardier's communications director Michael Clark could not on Wednesday afternoon say how many new designers and engineers were Queenslanders, but denied the Indian trainees were staying.
"We deny that, that is certainly not the case," Mr Clark.
Mr Clark said employees were bought over from their Indian plant as "observers".
"There are people coming from India to observe and understand how and what we are designing to build," he said.
"The people that are coming, they are coming to observe what we are doing."
He said production teams from Savli in India had been visiting the Milton office to understand the quality level, the finishings and specifications of the project.
"That is all they are doing," he said.
"They are not staying in Australia. The people that are here are either the local team or visitors that are coming from the greater Bombardier business.
"And they are here to learn what we want them to do.
"They are not coming here on 457 visas and we are not paying them Indian rates of pay."
The Queensland Government's Translink referred all questions to the Bombardier consortium.
A spokesman for Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Senator Michaelia Cash, said the issue would be investigated.
"The Government has always made it clear that Australians must always have priority in the labour market to ensure skilled foreign workers act as a supplement to and not a substitute for Australian workers."
"There are a number of incentives inherent in the subclass 457 program for employers to employ Australians over skilled migrants, such as the genuineness test and the comparatively high costs that are associated with accessing the subclass 457 program."
The spokesman said a new immigration dob-in line could be used anonymously.
Telephone callers can phone 1800 009 623 or via the Immigration Department's website at https://www.immi.gov.au/Help/Pages/immigration-dob-in-service.aspx
In March 2015 the Senate approved an investigation – moved by Labor and backed by the crossbench senators - into potential misuse of overseas-based workers.
The Government did not back the inquiry saying its own investigations found no proof of overseas workers being used instead of Australians.
