There is an issue bubbling away that the Labor Party is seriously missing in action on and it is both abdicating its responsibilities and dropping a huge political opportunity in the process. It is this, from Australia’s last journalist standing, Adele Ferguson:
Minutes into Don Meij’s investor presentation the Domino’s share price tanked 8 per cent. By the close of trade it had fallen 14 per cent, wiping hundreds of millions of dollars off its market value.
The reason? The market is rapidly losing confidence in the company, its operating model and its cashflow. This was despite it serving up another record profit and record sales.
The brutal reality is investors are concerned that wage fraud is systemic and the numbers released for franchisee profitability don’t quite stack up.
After days of insisting that only four franchisees had been terminated over three years for wage fraud, Domino’s admitted that 22 franchisees had left the system over underpayment issues following 102 store audits.
Assuming that a typical franchisee then has 1.8 stores, that means something like 40 per cent of the stores it has audited had payroll compliance issues. That’s a high strike rate in anyone’s books. It could be even higher than that as some franchisees who have been quietly ushered out of the Domino’s network had more than two stores.
Such an alarmingly high rate should be a call to arms for the regulator to take action. Additionally, Domino’s should take a leaf out of Caltex’s book and audit all of its franchised stores.
And this:
An an opinion piece published in Fairfax Media, Unions NSW Secretary Mark Morey has called for a royal commission into wage theft following revelations about Domino’s, 7-Eleven, Caltex, Pizza Hut and other fast food and cafe businesses exposing how workers are being robbed of wages.
“Exploitation and wage theft is rampant across the service sector,” Mr Morey said. “The gig economy is making it worse, putting downward pressure on wages by shattering previously permanent jobs into one-off tasks.”
This rorting was outlined in all of its hideous glory in the recent Senate Education and Employment References Committee report entitled A National Disgrace: The Exploitation of Temporary Work Visa Holders, which noted that Australia’s Working Holiday Maker and student visa holders were “consistently reported to suffer widespread exploitation in the Australian workforce”.
The Committee also noted that undocumented foreign workers were eroding labour standards for Australian employees:
The committee received evidence that undocumented work by migrant labour has resulted not only in the severe exploitation of highly vulnerable workers, but also impacted Australia’s labour markets, including placing downward pressure on the wages and conditions of Australian workers and undercutting the majority of legitimate employers that abide by Australian workplace laws.
The Committee also took direct aim at the 457 visa system and recommended sweeping reforms.
Where is Labor on this? We get the odd door stop:
Labor leader Bill Shorten is demanding answers from the government after labelling allegations of corruption within the nation’s customs agencies as a major crisis.
Immigration officials have been referred for investigation over alleged fraud in the skilled and student visa program, an ABC/Fairfax investigation has found.
“If the reports in today’s media are even half true, the Australian government has lost control of its visa system to the crooks and criminals,” Mr Shorten told reporters in Melbourne on Monday.
And speech:
Australia must not become an “unskilled enclave in a modernising Asia”, where Australian workers lose out to exploited overseas workers, Bill Shorten will warn in a major speech to lay out Labor’s 2017 agenda.
The opposition leader will also accuse some employers of using overseas workers as a low-cost substitute for local workers.
He will say while the government issued 10,400 visas for trade and technician jobs last year, apprenticeships in those sectors are in decline. “We cannot allow our country to become an unskilled enclave in a modernising Asia,” Shorten will say…
“It’s become too easy to import skills – rather than train our own people,” Shorten will say…
“Everybody loses when people are brought in from overseas and exploited,” Shorten will say. “Good employers, Australian companies who do the right thing – can’t compete with third-world labour costs and conditions.
“Local people, looking for work, miss out on jobs they could be doing: nurses, carpenters, cooks, early-childhood educators, electricians and motor mechanics.
“These practices drive down everyone’s wages, they undermine everyone’s safety – and they corrode our national skills base”…
“This government has cut $2.5bn from skills and training – and Australia has shed 128,000 apprenticeships,” Shorten will say. “Meanwhile, youth unemployment in New England is over 15%, in Launceston over 20% – and in Cairns over 25%. Labor will not give up on these kids – or these communities.”
But where is the policy fire? The visa system is broken. The labour market is being undermined. These are core issues for Labor’s traditional voters who look to it to protect their wages (what else is it even for?). Bill Shorten should be breathing fire not blowing smoke rings.
Moreover, these jobs are typically occupied by immigrants so there is some kind of feedback loop here between high immigration, low paid jobs, union deterioration and falling incomes in the economy. Therein lies the political opportunity. Today, both Left and Right parties worldwide are being ripped apart by populist movements revolting against globalisation and its adherents. Typically they merge working class values and policy supports with corporate nationalism and are therefore a threat to both sides of the isle.
In Australia it takes the form of One Nation which is taking Labor votes, just not as many as it is from the Coalition.
All Labor needs to do is announce a complete overhaul of Australia’s corrupt visa system that will implicitly result in the lower rate of immigration that the economy desperately needs. It’s easy logic to spell out in an “Australia First” agenda:
- the Coalition and its corporate mates have corrupted the visa system;
- Labor is pro-immigration but the undermining of the labour market is now a crisis that is damaging standards of living (wages have tanked, after all);
- place this within a competition and productivity reform agenda that aims to raise incomes;
- and pledge Labor will tighten up the lot by fixing the visa system and managing immigration down to historic levels.
One Nation will have to support it, it neutralises its single strongest pull of support for Labor voters, and does so without all of the bigotry that is suddenly so popular. It would also extend the very thing that renovated Bill Shorten’s leadership in the first place, the policy substance emanating from his negative gearing reforms, as well as drive a wedge into the Coalition and its culture wars.
It is so politically attractive and policy credible that one is tempted to conclude that the failure to do it so far is the result of a clique of ideological globalists taking control of the party to its electoral detriment.
If so, wake up. If Labor does not do it then the incoming Coalition leader will and then you’re #$%&!
