Minerals Council attacks ALP’s labour hire crackdown

By in Australian Economy

| 6 comments

By Leith van Onselen

The Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) has attacked Labor’s planned crackdown on labour hire companies, claiming it will reduce its flexibility and make it less globally competitive. From The AFR:

The Minerals Council of Australia is urging Labor to temper a planned crackdown on casualisation and labour hire, warning that the industry relies on workforce flexibility to remain globally competitive…

“We want to work with them [Labor] so they understand that our industry is not there trying to take advantage of workers,” chief executive Tania Constable said.

Labor hire is at the pointy end of Australia’s migrant wage rort. Recall what the parliamentary inquiry into establishing a modern slavery act said:

Committee view

9.146 The Committee recognises that recent Commonwealth, state and territory inquiries have highlighted the role that unscrupulous labour hire companies play in contributing to the exploitation of migrant workers…

9.150 While the Committee acknowledges that a labour licensing scheme is no ‘silver bullet’ to stopping exploitation and modern slavery, it considers that taken together with the Australian Government’s existing measures and the recommendations of this report, it will assist to improve protections for migrant workers…

Recommendation 48

9.152 The Committee recommends that the Australian Government establish a uniform national labour hire licensing scheme, consistent with recommendations by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, the Joint Standing Committee on Migration and the Senate Education and Employment References Committee. This licensing scheme should incorporate random audits and unannounced inspections of labour hire firms to ensure compliance.

In short, the MCA is talking its own book here and must be ignored by Labor.

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Comments

  2. Clive

    cue Anus Bollox (Innes Willox) and a new survey on skills shortages in industries that can’t find enough people who want to work for peanuts in 3….2…..1….

  3. Clive

    Worth looking at the CEO of the Minerals Council:

    “Tania Constable PSM, joined the Minerals Council of Australia in July 2018 where she is proud to promote and advocate for a strong, vibrant and innovative minerals industry in Australia…Prior to this, Tania was Chief Executive Officer of the CO2CRC (Collaborative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies) a leading global research organisation testing carbon capture and storage low emission technologies in Australia.”

    How nice. It’s a shame that the “carbon capture” sham, talked up for decades by the coal industry as a way to justify business as usual and the promise of big things to come, is a non-viable technology that will probably never be realised. Instead it has been the “science” ace up the sleeve of Big Coal and Big Bullshit. That’s why Josh Friedenliar and Scotty Godbotherer just love to put public money into this coal technology “science” – most likely because the fossil fuel industry is too poor to do so themselves:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/16/itd-be-wonderful-if-the-claims-made-about-carbon-capture-were-true

    Cutting to the chase, Ms Constable has switched from being CEO of one of the biggest research cons/frauds/distractions designed to legitimise coal to the august Minerals Council – and now supports slavery and mass immigration.

    Thanks goodness that she’s a woman or I would be tempted to label her a white middle aged carpetbagger with the opportunism of hyena and morals of a snake.

    Ms Constable “…has attacked Labor’s planned crackdown on labour hire companies, claiming it will reduce its flexibility and make it less globally competitive.”

    Oh no! That’s just what happened to the cotton, coffee and tea industry when the slave trade ended. Closer to home perhaps, when children were no longer forced to work in mines it was the same result for the coal industry in the UK.

    ’cause profit is everything.

    History shows that there is always a “Ms Constable” there to defend the indefensible for 30 pieces of silver and free access to the first class Qantas lounge.

  5. DominicMEMBER

    I have a suggestion for how the mining companies can cut the wage bill: shave a chunk off the bloated salaries that senior management are earning and travel in Economy Class. Let’s face it: if your profitability relies almost solely on exploiting workers via labor hire companies then you can’t be doing a very good job in the role for which you were hired.

    Gone are the days when management remuneration and performance were linked. Now it’s a simple case of ‘entitlement’.