The 88 days, the Working Holiday visa and solar farm work

What the requirement is, in outline

In outline, and only in outline: the Working Holiday programme lets young people from participating countries live and work in Australia for a period, and there is a pathway to extending that stay which is conditional on having done a defined amount of a defined kind of work, in defined parts of the country.

Every one of the words "defined" in that sentence is doing real work, and every one of them is defined by the Department, not by us:

• Which work counts. There is a published list of industries and activities that qualify. Construction appears on it. Whether a particular role on a particular site qualifies is a question about the actual work, not about the job title.
• Where it counts. Eligibility is tied to designated regional areas, expressed as postcodes, and the list is not the same for every industry or every visa.
• How much of it. The familiar number, expressed in days of work, with rules about what a day means, how part-time and piece-rate work is counted, and how breaks are treated.
• Which visa you hold. The subclasses are not identical in what they require.

None of those four is stable enough for us to restate. All four are published in one place.

How solar farm work fits

Utility-scale solar farms are built in regional Australia by definition — they need land and a grid connection, which is not something you find near a capital city — and building one is construction work. That combination is why solar farms have become a common destination for people looking for qualifying work.

Compared with the fruit-picking work the requirement is best known for, solar construction tends to differ in a few ways that are worth knowing:

• The engagement is longer. A harvest is weeks; a solar build phase is months. That makes it easier to accumulate continuous work with one employer, and easier to get a clean record of it.
• The pay basis is usually hourly, rather than piece rates. What that means for your entitlements is a question for fairwork.gov.au, not for us.
• The employer is usually a construction company or a labour-hire agency, which is more likely to have formal payroll than a small farm — which matters when you need records.
• The sites are remote, and accommodation is often part of the arrangement. See what the work actually is for what that looks like day to day.

On this board, listings that the employer has flagged as counting towards the 88 days carry a 88 days badge, and many of them add a note explaining why — usually the postcode and the nature of the work. Treat that as the employer's statement of their understanding. It is useful, and it is not a determination: the Department decides what counts, on the evidence you provide, at the time you apply.

What to keep while you are working

Whatever the rules are when you apply, you will be asked to evidence the work you did. The practical advice that does not change is: keep everything, from day one, and do not rely on anyone else keeping it for you.

• Payslips, for every pay period, from the entity that actually employs you.
• A record of the days you worked — your own, in a notebook or a phone note, written the same week rather than reconstructed six months later.
• The employer's legal name and ABN, not just the name on the gate. Three companies can be involved in the same job; you need the one that pays you.
• The site address and postcode, because the regional-area question is answered by postcode.
• Bank statements showing the payments arriving.
• Anything the employer signs confirming your engagement or your hours.

Two habits are worth more than the rest. First, ask for what you need while you still work there — a request made after you have left, to a site that has since demobilised, is a much harder request. Second, keep your own record alongside the employer's, because the two being consistent is what makes both credible.

Warning signs worth taking seriously

The specified-work requirement creates pressure, and pressure attracts people who exploit it. The pattern is well documented by Australian regulators and by the press, and it is consistent enough to recognise.

Be careful of anyone who:

• asks you to pay for the job, for the placement, or for a signature confirming your days — no legitimate employer or agency charges a worker to be placed;
• offers to sign for days you did not work. Beyond the obvious, this puts your own application at risk in a way that is very hard to recover from;
• pays cash with no payslip, or refuses to put the arrangement in writing;
• is vague about who employs you when you ask directly;
• ties your accommodation to your job in a way that leaves you with no exit — this is the mechanism behind most of the worst cases;
• pressures you to start before an induction, or discourages you from asking about pay.

If something is wrong at work, the Fair Work Ombudsman is the regulator, and their published position is that they help workers regardless of visa status: fairwork.gov.au. Check that for yourself — the point of naming them here is that there is somewhere official to go, not that we can tell you what they will do.

Questions to ask before you take the job

If the 88 days are part of why you are taking a role, these are the questions to have answered before you travel:

1. What is the site postcode? Then check it yourself against the Department's designated areas for your visa and industry.
2. Who is my legal employer? Get the company name and ABN.
3. Will I get payslips, and how often?
4. Will the employer confirm my hours in writing at the end of the engagement?
5. How long is this engagement expected to run? Days accumulate; a two-week job is a two-week job.
6. Is the work I will actually be doing the work the listing describes? The requirement is about the work, not the title.

And then verify the visa side yourself, on the Department's own pages. Not with us, not with the employer, and not with the person in the hostel who did it two years ago under different rules.

Where to look on this board

Listings the employer has flagged as counting towards the 88 days are filterable directly: openings flagged as 88-days eligible. Many of them also provide accommodation, which matters when the site is two hours from the nearest town — openings with accommodation.

By region, the states with openings right now are listed on the jobs-by-state page, and by trade on the jobs-by-trade page. Most 88-days-flagged work on a solar farm is labouring or trade assistant work, neither of which usually asks for previous solar experience.

If you want to know what you would actually be doing all day, that is the other guide.