Via The Guardian:
Some of Australia’s largest employer groups have rejected suggestions that underpayment of workers amounts to “wage theft”, telling a Queensland parliamentary inquiry the term exaggerates the problem.
The Palaszczuk government called the hearings, which begin on Thursday, with a view to criminalising wage theft in Queensland.
Submissions to the inquiry have described how wage theft is “rampant”. Employees who steal from their workplaces face up to 10 years’ in jail. When the reverse happens, workers have to take civil action to reclaim their entitlements and there are no criminal penalties.
The Queensland Council of Unions says it has been contacted by 169 people to detail cases of wage theft since since setting up a website allowing workers to tell their stories.
The National Retail Association said wage “non-compliance” will never be eradicated because “there will always be a business operator with insufficient understanding, or insufficient scruples, for this to occur”.
The NRA acknowledged that underpayment was a problem, because it allowed businesses to undercut competitors who did the right thing by workers, but said new laws were not needed.
“In NRA’s view the exploitation of workers in any industry is not a failure of the legislation, but a failure of the wider system to educate workers in their rights under the legislation,” the submission said.
Other industry groups argued that underpayment was not necessarily theft.
The Housing Industry Association said the concept of wage theft “has been greatly exaggerated by implying that all underpayment of wages is theft”.
“The complexity of the current workplace relations framework and in particular the … awards applicable to the residential building industry are a major contributor to underpayment that in no way should be construed as theft.”
The Australian Industry Group said criminalising underpayments “would represent a major unnecessary and unwarranted change to the industrial relations system”.
“The term ‘wage theft’ is inappropriate,” the AIG submission says. “It risks inappropriately branding employers who mistakenly underpay their employees as criminals.
The Australian Industry Group is run by Innes Willox. Willox is also the chair of the supposedly migrant-friendly Migration Council:
The Migration Council Australia (MCA) is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit body established to enhance the productive benefits of Australia’s migration and humanitarian programs.
MCA brings together corporate Australia and the community sector to provide a national voice to advocate for effective settlement and migration programs.
We believe that the success of the migration program is critical to Australia’s future prosperity. Assisting new migrants and refugees to settle is an investment in the future of the Australian community, our economy and our prospective workforce.
Willox has an open conflict of interest and should resign. How can the Migration Council chair fight against anti-wage theft laws?
Migrants are the worst offenders as well as most pervasive victims of wage theft. See the evidence:
- 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’s recent 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.
- Last month we 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.
Almost as bad is The Guardian itself. It is rightly concerned by wage theft but it’s pro-immigration extremism is clearly in league with the thieves.
