Australian rural doctors exploited by health care network
A chain of 50 medical clinics across regional Australia has been under "significant financial stress for 18 months" resulting in doctors, some on temporary working visas, often not being paid for weeks or months, the ABC reports.
Tristar Medical Group provides some rural and regional towns with their only bulk-billing general practices.
Doctors in the network are almost all from overseas and their visas are tied to their employment to Tristar. Doctors report:
working for months with no regular pay
when they are paid it is in only small amounts with significant amounts in arrears
lack of awareness of employment rights and laws in Australia
being too sacred to talk about thier situation incase they lose their job and visa.
This case demonstrates that it is not only ‘blue collar’ workers that are vulnerable to exploitation.
