Working Holiday and solar farm work: the visa side, beyond the 88 days

Two subclasses, and they are not interchangeable

The Working Holiday programme runs as two visas, and people use one word for both. Subclass 417 is the Working Holiday visa, subclass 462 is the Work and Holiday visa, and which one you can apply for depends on your passport and on the arrangement Australia has with that country. The application requirements differ, the age limits are not identical everywhere, and — the part that matters on a construction site — the work and the regions that count towards a further visa are not defined identically for the two.

This is not a detail you should take from an article, including this one. The definitions change, they are published by the Department of Home Affairs, and they are published per subclass. Read them at immi.homeaffairs.gov.au and read the page for the subclass you actually hold. An employer's opinion about your visa is not evidence, however confidently it is offered.

What is true of both, and worth stating: you have full work rights while the visa is valid. You are not on a restricted permit and you are not doing anybody a favour by accepting less than the job pays. Pay and conditions on a construction site are set by the agreement or award covering the work, not by your passport.

The six-month limit, and why it matters more on solar than on fruit

The condition most likely to catch you out on a solar build is the limitation on how long a Working Holiday holder may work for one employer. Historically that has been six months with a single employer, with exceptions and with the possibility of asking permission to stay longer, and the current wording — including which exceptions apply to which subclass — is again on the Home Affairs pages rather than here.

Why it bites harder here than in agriculture: a solar farm is not a season, it is a project. A build runs for many months and often more than a year, and the crews that stay on it are the ones the contractor keeps moving from phase to phase. That is a good thing for your work and a thing to plan for on your visa. Two practical consequences:

• Know who your employer actually is. On a large build there is a principal contractor, there are subcontractors for piling, for tracker installation, for cabling, for commissioning, and there are labour hire companies supplying people to several of them. The name on your payslip is the employer for this purpose, and it is not always the name on the gate.
• Ask the question early rather than at month five. Whether the limit is approaching, and what your options are if it is, is a conversation with the department and with your employer, and it is far easier to have when there is time to move you than when there is not.

There is nothing irregular about any of this. It is ordinary project staffing meeting an ordinary visa condition, and the only bad version is the one nobody looked at until it was urgent.

What changes in a second year, and what does not

A further Working Holiday visa is earned by doing specified work in specified regional areas for a specified period — that is the 88 days, and our guide to them is where the requirement, the record keeping and the warning signs are set out in full. Assume for this section that you have them.

What changes when you come back on a second year is mostly not legal, it is practical, and it is the part nobody tells you:

• You are no longer a stranger to the industry. You have a White Card that is already issued, an induction you have already sat through, references from people who have watched you work, and — the thing that actually gets you called — the phone number of a leading hand who remembers you. On these sites that is worth more than another certificate.
• You can aim at a role rather than at a job. A first year is often taken as it comes. A second one can be pointed at a trade: trade assistant work, plant, or the electrical side if you already hold a licence from home and have worked out where it stands here. Career progression on a solar build sets out what the rungs actually are.
• Your tickets may have moved. First aid and low voltage rescue are short-lived. Check them before you fly rather than at a gate.

What does not change: the work is the work. It is outdoors, it is hot, it is regional, and the roster is the roster. A second year is not a promotion by itself.

When a solar build is actually hiring

A solar farm does not hire evenly across its life, and knowing the shape of it is most of the difference between arriving somewhere useful and arriving three weeks late.

A build moves through phases — earthworks and piling, then the mechanical phase where the tracker structures and the modules go on, then cabling and terminations, then commissioning. Solar farm construction jobs describes them properly. The mechanical phase is where the headcount peaks, and it is where general labouring and trade assistant intakes are largest. Commissioning is smaller and much more electrical.

Two things follow from that:

• Timing is about the project, not about the calendar. There is no national hiring season for solar the way there is for a harvest. Different sites are in different phases at the same time, which is why the useful question is "what phase is that site in" rather than "is it a good month".
• Being already in the region is an advantage that compounds. A crew being built next week goes to people who can be there next week. FIFO and DIDO on Australian solar builds covers the accommodation side, which is the practical version of that question.

The boring administrative half

None of this is visa law and all of it is what people get wrong in their first month.

• A tax file number, applied for early. Working without one costs you real money in withholding, and the application takes time you would rather spend on site.
• Superannuation is paid on your work, and you can claim it when you leave. It is not a bonus and it is not optional for the employer. The rules for claiming it after you go are published by the Australian Taxation Office.
• Keep your own record of hours and of employers. The same habit the 88 days require is the habit that resolves a payslip dispute six months later, and it costs a note a week.
• A bank account and an Australian phone number before you go regional. Coverage in a paddock is a separate problem; opening an account from one is a worse one.

Where to start on this board

Filter the board by State and by trade and read the listings for what they say about accommodation and about the roster, because those two decide whether a role is possible from where you are. If the 88 days are why you are looking, the listings marked 88-days eligible are one filter away. Browse what is open now, and if you are starting with a White Card and no site history, solar farm jobs with no experience is the honest starting point.

General information only, and not migration advice. Visa subclasses, work limitations, eligibility for a further visa and the definitions of specified work and specified regions are set by the Australian Government and change. The authoritative source is immi.homeaffairs.gov.au, and for pay and conditions it is fairwork.gov.au. Nothing on this page is a substitute for either.