The joint Fairfax-Four Corners investigation, which uncovered that around two-thirds of 7-Eleven stores across Australia had ruthlessly exploiting foreign workers, has just taken another sinister turn.
After it was initially revealed that many foreign student workers had been paid around half the award rate of pay (known as the “half pay scam”), Fairfax’s Adele Ferguson has now uncovered that some employees have been forced to make cash payments back to franchisees or risk deportation:
It revolves around employees now receiving the correct award rate in their nominated bank accounts for the hours they have worked.
They are then expected to pay part of it back to the franchisee in cash, away from the surveillance cameras that operate in most of the 620 stores.
If they refuse to play ball, they lose their job and are threatened with deportation. Their names become mud around the network…
Text messages between a franchisee and a 7-Eleven employee from a Brisbane store leave no doubt that this new fraud is widespread.
The more one looks at the foreign visa rorts issue, the worse the whole system looks.
Just to recap, we’ve already had Job Network rorts, 417 working holiday rorts on farms, international education university cheating and plagiarism rorts, and numerous 457 visa rorts. And now this!
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