Ever since the 7-Eleven migrant worker scandal broke in 2015, there has been a conga-line of stories about the systemic abuse of Australia’s various migrant worker programs and visa system.
The issue culminated last year when the Senate Education and Employment References Committee released a scathing report entitled A National Disgrace: The Exploitation of Temporary Work Visa Holders, which documented the abuses of Australia’s temporary visa system for foreign workers.
Back in August, Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), Natalie James, told Fairfax that people on visas continue to be exploited at an alarming rate, particularly those with limited English-language skills. It was also revealed that foreign workers are involved in more than three-quarters of legal cases initiated by the FWO against unscrupulous employers.
Sadly, the reports of widespread rorting and exploitation of migrants rolls on, with one of the largest meat suppliers to Woolworths, Coles and Aldi reportedly employing hundreds of migrant workers in slum-like conditions. From The Canberra Times:
The company, Thomas Foods International, Australia’s largest family-owned meat processing operation, makes use of an army of migrant workers at its Tamworth processing plant. Many of these workers are living crammed into residential homes, with reports of as many as 20 living under the same roof.
Workers say they feel trapped in the houses, and risk losing their jobs by moving out.
Thomas Foods employs large numbers of migrants – estimated at more than 50 per cent of its workforce – despite the New England region having a youth unemployment rate of 19.6 per cent, above the national average of 12.4 per cent.
The company’s chief operating officer David McKay said in 2015, he preferred foreign labour because “some Australians lack the work ethic” or failed drug tests…
“Our business would not be where it is today without the 457 [visa] scheme and later on 417s,” [CEO Darren Thomas] said.
Thomas Foods stands to reap significant financial rewards from employing migrants, many come on working-holiday visas, employed at entry-level or probationary rates, and often have no chance to progress to higher grades of pay because under the terms of their visa, they can only work for one employer for a maximum of six months and are also forced to return home after a year…
Unregistered boarding houses are peppered across the residential suburbs of Tamworth, sitting among family homes and often packed with Korean and Taiwanese workers…
Behind the foreign job ads and the Facebook pages are two Tamworth locals: En-Ting Ling, known locally as Frank, and David Gao, an employment agent.
Frank is known as a “house master,” operating a number of the boarding houses around town. He works with Mr Gao, who supplies him with the tenants…
One worker, who did not want to be identified said he paid Frank $100 per week for a bed in a house with three bedrooms. Two of the rooms contained two single beds, the third had two bunk beds and the living room had a mattress on the floor.
“At first they told us everything was okay and they sent us pictures taken years ago. It looked good but the reality was totally different,” he said…
The Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union is pushing for new laws which would force Thomas Foods and other businesses to hire locally.
“Surely large employers, in particular Thomas Foods International should be looking at pathways for local kids to get into the meat industry,” said union secretary Grant Courtney.
“But they just have a focus on continuous churn of temporary international labour”…
Maybe the local kids are failing drugs tests because they can’t get a job ahead of a cheap import?
This is Australia’s post-mining boom class war in action. Little wonder that Australian wages growth is so low when employers right across the country can so easily grab migrant workers under slave-like conditions instead of training and employing locals.
The Senate report on the exploitation of temporary foreign workers was released in March 2016, and yet 20 months later there has been minimal action from the federal government, with widespread rorting of Australia’s visa program continuing unabated.
How many more examples do we need before our politicians take action and close down the various avenues to exploitation and rorting?
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This is another case that proves that the youth of today are too busy getting high (on the unsociable drugs) while watching p0rn and playing video games! Bringing in cheap imported human capital is a great way to maximise profits and should be encouraged. These imports really appreciate having a job, a meal a day, and a roof over their heads and never complain about it. If only the locals would behave in the same manner.
The kids today have been told they are special little snowflakes who deserve only the best. They dont want to work a back breaking job for minimum wage, when they can live at home sucking off of mummy and daddy’s teats while they wait for the call to become senior manager of something. The drugs just make the time go faster.
So only backbreaking jobs exist?
This website wants gas reservation. How about job reservation for the non-back-breaking jobs in the government funded NBN (which hires 3rd world passport holders for entry level jobs). Shorten said he wants Aussie kids to learn computer programming. What the hell for? When PM Shorten will keep giving out 457 visas for $0 each.
those ” special little snowflakes who deserve only the best” are made such by their BB parents who started living nice (late and chardonnay) lives only after they left their sucky factory jobs and turned into a “special little investor-job creators who deserve even better than their kids”
Not really true. The parents of 20 years olds are mostly Gen-Xers.
That is exactly the essence of it. Studies elsewhere confirm it too. Locals think they’re better than many of the jobs available and wouldn’t do them even if offered the opportunity. But it doesn’t stop them from complaining that foreigners are ‘stealing’ jobs they wouldn’t even do. You really couldn’t make it up.
In 2010 the BBC aired a documentary called: The Day the Immigrants Left, which illustrates the issue perfectly.
So on point! LOL
https://vimeo.com/239050403
It is much cheaper to employ immigrants.
Immigrants will they do these dirty slaughterhouse jobs, and do it for less! And for longer hours. That means more output per unit input, higher productivity and higher profits for Thomas foods.
The company I work at (big IT sweatshop) replaces anyone who resigns or falls pregnant with someone on a 457 visa. They cost around 60% of the person they replaced, don’t demand any training, and we can work them harder and for longer hours because of the threat of revoking their visa. All that wouldn’t work with a lazy Tamworth local.
That is the bottom-line…training and opportunity for the locals, forget it. To get their cheap labour politicians and their business mates are trashing the amenity of the country. The only thing that will trash their little scheme is a severe economic downturn.
Bringing in cheap imported human capital is a great way to maximise profits and should be encouraged.
Like the Rohingya?
“A meal a day” 😉 very good – you’re firing today, man.
Seems to have sailed over a few heads though…
I wonder where the Member for NewZealand is standing on this matter – after all is his “electorate” or so he would have us believe it…
Yep. What does the douchebag have to say? He just got Johnny Depp to apologise on camera so that Barnaby can pretend that law enforcement is strong in Australia.
And Tony Windsor is only concerned about broadband. Fibre mate! Who cares if chain smoking males from the 3rd world are coming into New England to work for illegal wages!
Is this what Barnaby meant by affordable housing in Tamworth?
I was at a town, Deepwater, talking to some gold prospectors who worked at the subject meatworks,
they recon, all this immigrant, muslim thingy is connected to the halal thingy and the schemes they had to circumvent the process and make a quid on the side. Original john, is was connected with that, hes been missing for a while. hope he is still with us
…
Um, taiwanese and south koreans aren’t muslims….
Cost of doing business in Australia is too high. Those businesses would be out of business if they employed locals and paid local wage rates and conditions. Australia has regulated its cost base so high now that unless you want companies like Thomas Foods to employ zero people (which it will if it goes bust), then we need to look at ways of reducing costs for business (such as abolishing minimum wage, renewable energy targets and decrease the cost of land and other inputs). There is only so much a consumer will pay for his lamb chops!
Another astroturfer!
Uhh, no. Just somebody who can see the writing on the wall. That this country is legislating and regulating its own population out of jobs, homes and livelihoods.
So, tell me – o’ wise wall message reader: What does your precious business do when the population base it depends on as customers/clients can’t afford your services because they have no jobs? Hmmm?
How’s them apples, little man?
This is about China buying up all our farms, filling them with slaves, and shipping the food back overseas. Employing and feeding Australians is inconsequential.
It is a takeover.
@Freddy
I know – but I was just humouring the shallow troll.
The general view on these mofos side seems to be “why don’t youse useless c*nts, just go, lie down and die… and spare us the effort to kill youse all”
You seem confused. If the cost of business inputs such as land, labour and capital can be lowered and regulations that inhibit competition eliminated, then prices can be lowered (whilst still giving the entrepreneur a profit margin). Lower prices mean more people can consume the output, raising living standards. As it is, Australia is not competitive with many parts of the world. Wages are too high, land prices are too high, energy is too high. A strong and brief period of deflation and debt default is needed to reset to a lower cost base and restore competitiveness. Failing that we can just let the currency die in the arse and see what happens to living standards then.
So why are the societies with the lowest wages not the societies with the highest living standards ?
@Niubi878 Oh… Do tell me more about this dribble-down economics theory you seem to be so espoused to.
I gotta award you trolling points for style, though.
I didn’t say we need lowest, just lower costs. As it stands Australia is uncompetitive in many areas due to its high cost base and lack of productivity. High wages in and of itself is not a bad thing. In fact it is a damned good thing provided those high wages are backed up by high productivity. What is unsustainable is high costs and low or now productivity growth. We compete in a global marketplace where people in other countries are willing to work much harder for lower rates of pay. Unless Australia can justify its world class pay rates with world leading productivity growth, living standards must fall. Either that or we put up trade barriers or trash the currency. No easy alternatives ahead.
Productivity and wage growth have been decoupled for decades.
Generally speaking, the fewer rights workers have (your objective), the more substantial the decoupling.
Or, in other words, your plan to remove or reduce workers rights, will produce the opposite outcome to the one you claim.
@drsmithy that’s the problem isn’t it then. Japan and Germany are high wage countries with some of the highest productivity rates in the world. Their high wages are justified by economic outcomes. The same can’t be said for Australia. The alternative is companies like Thomas Foods exploit rules like the 457 visa system to keep costs down so they can make a buck. Businesses like these are the backbone of the communities they operate in. High wages and entitlements, without the productivity to back them up, may be possible in the short term, but completely unsustainable in the long run.
Nuibi, if the company is running on slave trade wages from asia, how is it the backbone of the economy of Tamworth? Are the owners giving money away to the displaced youth that have no chance of employment? Are they donating money for local parks or something? Are they building social housing? Or do you mean it’s the backbone of the housing economy for the housing owners? Please enlighten us.
@drsmithy that’s the problem isn’t it then.
Yes, it is. Though not the problem you seem to think it is.
Wages and productivity have decoupled, in that productivity has continued increasing quite strongly while wages have increased much less so, if not completely stagnated.
This effect is much more pronounced in places like the USA with very poor workers rights, where productivity has skyrocketed but real wages have been stagnant for the better part of forty years.
The benefits of the massive productivity increase of the last few decades have gone almost entirely to the top few percent.
Japan and Germany are high wage countries with some of the highest productivity rates in the world.
What productivity metric are you using that has Japan and Germany significantly better than Australia ?
Also, Japan and Germany also still have very strong worker protections (lots of “entitlements” as you would say). Maybe not the best example for your argument.
The alternative is companies like Thomas Foods exploit rules like the 457 visa system to keep costs down so they can make a buck. Businesses like these are the backbone of the communities they operate in.
Rrrrright. So they import a bunch of workers, rather than employing locals, and consequently they’re a “backbone of the communities they operate in” ? You might want to think that one through a bit more.
Thomas Foods supplies to Coles, Woollies and Aldi. So why do they need to sell meat at 3rd world prices? They are selling to the domestic market.
Too right! I suggest you head off to the USA and get a job at Walmart then!
Perhaps the worst aspect of a bubble is how it hollows out its own integrity from the inside, rather than evaporating from the outside.
This is a much crueler Australia than 20 years ago.
I really can’t wait for the fat lady to sing.
We really, really, deserve what’s coming.
Exactly, 20 years ago these businesses would have employed those pot smoking bludgers and eventually some of them would get used to regular income and life moves on. I know I was like that 20 years ago. This country is toxic now
Collectively yes we deserve it, but many are going to suffer for the actions of the most selfish in our society.
Not surprising, the ABC says 30% plus of kids in school have serious social and psycho conditions.
This social experiment in helicoptering money is going to get heaps worse before it improves, and wipe out the lives of most of the populace. It has been near commercial suicide for the practitioners.
We also know that half the population is not medically fit, and 80% are not fit enough to be accepted by the military.
If Straya was a business would you buy in, or hire the likes of Chainsaw to sort it.
Its not helicopter money that is the problem, its helicopter parenting. Kids have been brought up with no work ethic – teachers and parents have done everything for them all their lives. You don’t expect them to actually go out to work a real job do you? Not when they can live at home with their parents still paying for everything.
My cousin is like that living at home with mum, never holds down a job has given up at 33, has had an ice habbit etc.. I do worry. I’ve busted my arse for 10+ years working full time at the same company saving money etc.. still struggled to buy a home (I want), I sometimes wonder what the point is? I just hope housing affordability improves. I think it has a huge negative impact on mental health.
My cousin is a single child, who stands to inherit his mum’s place and investment property. So he probably doesn’t see the point in hard work to some extent.
“Chainsaw”‘
Good reference and exactly what we need. An Australian Lee Kuan Yew
If Australia is a business, who are the shareholders?
When can they requisition an Extraordinary General Meeting and a Special Resolution to vote on a change in policy?
The wonderful thing about the Fallacy of False Analogy is that you can use it to prove just about anything!
I have never smoked a cigarette in my life let alone weed. But I guess if a few Aussies fail a drug test then it means all Aussies are on drugs?
Or the boss is lying and just wants to hire chain smoking males from the 3rd world who are willing to work here for illegal wages.
Yes, the latter.
In considering how ridiculous this employer’s claims are, consider someone publicly stating similarly disparaging things about the foreign workers.
I don’t know a single industry where there is a heavy reliance on foreign labour where rorts of some sort aren’t epidemic or where standards are compromised… or usually both.
It is not just the employers, there is a huge industry minting money off bringing in “skilled” migrants.
This is how CPA made their millions, verifying accounting qualifications. EA (Engineers Australia) does the same thing for IT and engineers.
Immigration agents are also minting it – my company employs them the handle the importation of 457 holders.
When a local resigns, we just replace him with a 457 holder or two. The immigration agent handles all the paperwork “proving’ that we couldn’t attract a suitable local.
So for each immigrant there is around $4000 for the agent, $3000 for EA to “vet” their qualifications and $3000 to the Immigration dept. All these fees can now be deducted from the immigrant’s wages.
Immigration agents can do everything themselves, too, charging the poor immigrant $20,000 and finding a shell company to offer them a “job”.
The whole thing is corrupt, but there’s lots of $ in it for agents many of whom are ex-government immigration officials themselves.
We should also consider the irony of the current political milieu where neoliberalism ‘happily’ mixes floods of cheap labour with a hefty dose of SJW style messaging to ensure compliance.
Imagine how this plays out in a few decades when no doubt we’ll all be held accountable for the ‘crimes’ against these workers even though the only people benefiting are a few at the top end of town and some of their fellow countrymen using language and cultural commonality to exploit them. You know it will be ‘Australia’ that is blamed.
And yeah… why are so many of our towns becoming meth central. Nothing to do with all the opportunities going to cheap indentured labour. For a cheaper lamb chop? Lol. This is the same argument we hear about landlords claiming to subsidise their tenants. They charge whatever the market bears and not based on costs. Markets 101.
Social Justice Warriors (SJW’s) being the bastard children of Frankfurt School Cultural Marxism.
And too braindead and poisoned to realise the evil agenda they’re advancing. May God have mercy on their souls.
If you told the majority of Australians nowadays that they are living in the “Lucky Country” they would probably openly agree with you but quietly think that you are an effing idiot.
Wages are being forced to directly do the job which should happen indirectly through exchange rates.
I guess this is just what happens when the exchange rate is dominated by Capital flows instead of Trade balance.
I can’t see any chance of change coming from the Australian sector but external forces are definitely building that will force change upon us.
Interesting times, I wouldn’t want to be young, unskilled and/or unemployed in Australia, life could get real hard real quick.
>Interesting times, I wouldn’t want to be young, unskilled and/or unemployed in Australia, life could get real hard real quick.
I think we’ll find out real quick that a good slab of the old, skilled and/or employed are going to cop it in the neck too sweet, too…
Couldn’t really blame them for wanting to kill us all,…eh?
Yep, time to tow Australia outside the exclusive economic zone (200 nautical mile limit) and start again.
Have you got the location of the bungs? I’ve looked for them, but counld’t find them.
Another dilemma of globalisation: Economic trade theories (Riccardo etc) were/are primarily to support company profits not conditions of employment or the long-term health of workers. Usual (classical) problem of workers rights in conflict with company profits. I would have thought by now, the useless academics would have found a way to resolve this conflict. On the one hand Australians have won huge benefits in wages and conditions over the past 30 years but it has come at huge costs and some of those are now beginning to play out in (1)persistently low wage/salary growth and, (2)import of people via 457’s etc to do the jobs Australians don’t want to do, or are willing to work cheaper than Australians. However, if 457’s were removed, companies would make considerably less profits paying workers more which would make goods and services more expensive to Australian consumers (who are currently struggling paying off hideously high housing loans) leaving companies paying less taxes (selling less goods; forget exporting) and slowly going broke…..so eventually these companies relocate to low wage countries (sorry I don’t blame them).
The question could be: Are workers on 457’s a necessary evil so corporates can pay higher taxes from which all Australians benefit? Maybe the Australian academics might like to tackle this one (on their ridiculous over generous wage and salary and conditions of employment).
>… Maybe the Australian academics might like to tackle this one (on their ridiculous over generous wage and salary and conditions of employment).
Shirley you jest! 😛
Why can wages not stay in a similar place with lower profit margins leading to cheaper goods ?
+1. You should visit Aldi. The cheapest possible shampoo, soap, shaving cream, deo, is made in Australia. The much more expensive shampoo is made in Thailand, India, etc. Completely destroying the argument of the astroturfers.
Looks like another round of anti-poor astroturfers signed up to this website.
Good points Smithy and Jay
Probably the new Qld Government could give Thomas Foods a call about its operations in its state if, that is, it wants street creds.
The government fully supports the rights of the migrants who are required to work when they come here to help our enormous skills shortage, but will of course vigorously strive to keep out migrants who aren’t allowed to work here due to the enormous shortage of jobs. We only ask that they wear coloured badges so that we can tell them apart.
You may consider having said “differentiating badges” tattooed since them migrants are a tricksy lot.
Yes, all fakers and criminals. Except the other ones obviously.
If the locals they’re looking at hiring are ‘lazy’ and/or ‘drugged’, odds are good that the candidates have been very long-term unemployed (with wage subsidies attached). There is a pattern here… ask yourself, why would an employer hire from among those most vulnerable and lacking better options?
FFS the Internet, Silicon Valley and the whole bloody modern computerised global financial system was designed and built by hash smoking, acid dropping, coke heads. Sounds like an excuse for cheap labour to me.
That said, there’s a lot of young depressed long term unemployed out there who have lost all sense of hope, lost social contact, and have withdrawn into drugs and have lost all motivation. Along with the exploding number of homeless and beggars or people living on the margins, another neoliberal “success”.