Imagine this: You’ve travelled to another country to earn some money, but once you arrive you’re significantly underpaid, and can only afford to eat plain white rice for every meal to sustain yourself.
That is the reality for many foreign skilled workers in Australia who often suffer in silence over fears their visa will be cancelled if they make a complaint about working conditions.
In one instance, the Electrical Trades Union found two Filipino and two Thai workers who were employed in a solar farm construction project just outside of Townsville were paid $40 a day plus a $42 allowance for food and accommodation.
Another case, found the employer of 30 workers from the Philippines working in a shipbuilding facility in Western Australia were being paid just $2.11 per hour.
A Senate committee is currently examining new laws to protect migrant workers from exploitation.
The government has lauded the bill for addressing the issue by establishing new criminal offences for employers who coercive migrant workers into accepting exploitative arrangements.
It was a key recommendation from a 2019 migrant workers’ task-force report.
When he introduced the bill to parliament last November, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke said the bill would “help to level the playing field”.
But critics say its fatal flaw is its lack of whistleblower protections for workers who report their own exploitation.
“The lack of whistleblower protections in this bill means that instead of improving the situation for many, this bill could push migrant worker exploitation further into the shadows,” Migrant Workers Centre chief executive Matt Kunkle said.
The ACTU added the matter goes beyond just a few “bad apples”.
“We’re not dealing with, as some have described, a few bad apples here. As countless reports, parliamentary inquiries, media investigations have found migrant workers face exploitative practices that are systemic and widespread,” ACTU Assistant Secretary Liam O’Brien said.
In a submission to the inquiry, the Migrant Justice Institute cited a 2019 survey of over 5000 international students which found 38 per cent did not xjmtzywreach out for help because they were concerned it could affect their visa.
“Further proof of the power of immigration-related fears lies in the fact that only 69 workers have availed themselves of the Assurance Protocol between the Department and Fair Work Ombudsman between 2017 and 2020,” the submission said.
In the horticulture sector, farms have become increasingly reliant on temporary migrant workers to get the job done.
“The reality is the sector is more or less reliant on temporary migrant workers,” National Farmers Federation general manager Ben Rogers said.
“Depending on the commodity in the season, overseas workers make up anywhere up to 80% of the farm‘s workforce.”
He said the NFF supported the bill as a “step in the right direction” but said without proper regulation it would be meaningless.
“It would be ideal if everyone complied with the law as soon as it was on the books,” Mr Rogers said.
“The reality is that those people who break current laws are, without more, unlikely to comply with new ones.
“Regulation without enforcement is largely window dressing.”
