Forty per cent of the staff would be located in Australia and 60 per cent offshore to Mahindra Satyam, head of ANZ operations Bobby Gupta told India's The Economic Times on Tuesday. The region currently accounts for 8 per cent of the firm's $US1.31 billion annual revenue. One worker told Fairfax Media he was made redundant from his nine-year IT management gig with a national liquor retailer in 2003 after the company hired Satyam (now Mahindra Satyam) to take over the IT jobs of eight local staff. "Satyam had set up company offices in Australia and were bringing in Indian IT staff to do our jobs," the worker claimed. "We were given a few months' notice of our redundancy and in that time we had to train the Indian staff on how to support our internal systems. It was never said but we were made to feel that if you wanted your redundancy payment, you had to train them. While training the Indian staff, we found out that they were all in Australia on 457 visas.

"There were six of them with some rotating to give others exposure to the systems." IT professionals say this practice is in common with other major systems integrators and consultancies that use short-term 456 and longer-term 457 visas to boost their bottom line by importing lower-paid overseas workers. Latest figures show 5800 ICT workers arrived on 457 visas, which allow them to stay for up to four years, in the past seven months. In a speech on Thursday morning at an Australian Council of Trade Unions event, Ms Gillard accused IT firms of rorting the visa scheme at the expense of local professionals. IT chiefs say the claim represents desperate vote mongering but those further down the tech food chain believe it's high time the government cottoned on to an issue they've long been highlighting.

"Local workers are effectively replaced by [456] visa holders who come in via their outsourcing employer and they stay for the minimum time, three months, I think, then go home and are replaced by another [456] visa holder," said one senior IT consultant, who asked to remain anonymous. "This way, their employers pay them minimum wages and are able to undercut local businesses in tendering for work. To my mind, this is the biggest rort in the system." Vendors and industry associations maintain the problem is one of skills – local candidates just don't have the specialised expertise of their imported brethren – but workers say their rhetoric cloaks an agenda that's all about economics. "I actually have a colleague here who came in under a 457 and is sponsored by [a major telco]," the consultant said. "His family are all here now and he's applying for permanent residency. I'm not sure what criteria he was able to meet but his actual job is fairly generic and could be filled by many Australian workers."