Flight Centre joins great Aussie wages rort, via the ABC:
Australian travel giant Flight Centre has been accused of ripping off customers and underpaying staff, some of whom say working at the company was like being in a cult.
ABC Investigations has spoken to dozens of current and former staff who said Flight Centre encourages its travel consultants to gouge customers by adding hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to bookings.
“In training they are telling you that you can mark-up flights,” said Olivia Little, who worked as a travel consultant at a Flight Centre store on the New South Wales central coast in 2016.
“It’s not a secret thing.”
The practice is not illegal and Flight Centre denies it is widespread among its more than 10,000 Australian staff.
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But it’s not just Flight Centre’s dealings with its customers that has come under scrutiny.Past and present staff have told the ABC the $6.7 billion company is built on a “work hard, play hard” alcohol-fuelled culture that grinds staff down with miserable pay and excessive unpaid overtime hours.
The Fair Work Ombudsman is now undertaking an investigation into how Flight Centre pays its staff, prompting the company to scramble to fix its pay deal amid a growing staff revolt.
…The motivation for staff to mark-up on bookings — and overcome any sense of guilt attached to the practice — seemingly comes as a result of Flight Centre’s low and confusing method of paying its staff.
The current base wage for travel consultants in Flight Centre stores is $33,500 — almost $4,000 below Australia’s minimum wage.
The rest of their salary is made up from commissions, which are accrued on the sale of airfares, hotels, travel insurance and holiday packages.
A leaked worker’s contract from Flight Centre, where the base retainer wage is listed at $31,500.
But staff say the pay structure makes it almost impossible to earn a decent wage without resorting to marking-up.
“Towards the end of the month, if you’re struggling to hit your target, you kind of have to pull the strings,” a current staff member told the ABC.
“You have to do what you have to do to get you there.”
If staff fail to make enough on commission over a month, Flight Centre tops up their pay to bring them in line with the minimum industry award wage.
But the ABC understands those top-ups have in the past been “clawed-back” from employees over future pay cycles. Flight Centre said it stopped the practice of clawing-back staff pay two years ago.
Some context:
- For years we have seen Dominos, Caltex, 7-Eleven, Woolworths and many other fast food franchises busted for rorting migrant labour.
- The issue culminated in 2016 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 systemic abuses of Australia’s temporary visa system for foreign workers.
- Mid last year, ABC’s 7.30 Report ran a disturbing expose on the modern day slavery occurring across Australia.
- Meanwhile, Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), Natalie James, told Fairfax in August last year 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.
- Then The ABC reported that Australia’s horticulture industry is at the centre of yet another migrant slave scandal, according to an Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into the issue.
- The same Parliamentary Inquiry was told by an undercover Malaysian journalist that foreign workers in Victoria were “brainwashed” and trapped in debt to keep them on farms.
- A recent UNSW Sydney and UTS survey painted the most damning picture of all, reporting that wages theft is endemic among international students, backpackers and other temporary migrants.
- A few months ago, Fair Work warned that most of Western Sydney had become a virtual special economic zone in which two-thirds of businesses were underpaying workers, with the worst offenders being high-migrant areas.
- Dr Bob Birrell from the Australian Population Research Institute latest report, based on 2016 Census data, revealed that most recently arrived skilled migrants (i.e. arrived between 2011 and 2016) cannot find professional jobs, with only 24% of skilled migrants from Non-English-Speaking-Countries (who comprise 84% of the total skilled migrant intake) employed as professionals as of 2016, compared with 50% of skilled migrants from Main English-Speaking-Countries and 58% of the same aged Australian-born graduates. These results accord with a recent survey from the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, which found that 53% of skilled migrants in Western Australia said they are working in lower skilled jobs than before they arrived, with underemployment also rife.
- The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) latest Characteristics of Recent Migrants report, revealed that migrants have generally worse labour market outcomes than the Australian born population, with recent migrants and temporary residents having an unemployment rate of 7.4% versus 5.4% for the Australian born population, and lower labour force participation (69.8%) than the Australian born population (70.2%).
- ABC Radio recently highlighted the absurdity of Australia’s ‘skilled’ migration program in which skilled migrants have grown increasingly frustrated at not being able to gain work in Australia despite leaving their homelands to fill so-called ‘skills shortages’. As a result, they are now demanding that taxpayers provide government-sponsored internships to help skilled migrants gain local experience, and a chance to work in their chosen field.
- In early 2018 the senate launched the”The operation and effectiveness of the Franchising Code of Conduct” owing in part to systematic abuse of migrant labour.
- Then there is new research from the University of Sydney documenting the complete corruption of the temporary visas system, and arguing that Australia running a “de-facto low-skilled immigration policy” (also discussed here at the ABC).
- In late June the government released new laws to combat modern slavery which, bizarrely, imposed zero punishment for enslaving coolies.
- Over the past few weeks we’ve witnessed widespread visa rorting across cafes and restaurants, including among high end establishments like the Rockpool Group.
- Alan Fels, head of the Migrant Workers Taskforce, revealed that international students are systematically exploited particularly by bosses of the same ethnicity.
The Australian industrial relations landscape is scorched earth.
