For 15 years, the Australian union movement has stood by silently while Australia’s immigration program was more than doubled:
The impacts on Australian workers has been terrible, with real wage growth stagnating for a decade:
Chronic underemployment and labour underutilisation:
And collapsing average hours worked:
Australian households have also been forced to endure some of the world’s most expensive housing and the prospect of being shoe-horned into shoe-box apartments, as chronic strong demand from immigration has pushed up dwelling prices and caused massive densification across our major cities.
The future is looking worse, with the ABS projecting that Australia’s population will balloon by another 17 million people by 2066 on the back of never-ending strong immigration:
Infrastructure Australia has also projected falling living standards in Sydney and Melbourne as their populations explode, with traffic congestion and commute times projected to worsen, alongside reduced access to jobs, schools, hospitals and green space over the 26 years to 2046:
While Australia’s mass immigration experiment has been an unmitigated disaster for the working class – crushing their wages, pushing up their cost of living, and degrading their quality of life – it has been a boon for the wealthy owners of Australia’s capital.
Moguls like Gerry Harvey and Highrise Harry Triguboff – strong supporters of mass immigration – are laughing all the way to the bank as they enjoy an ever-growing customer base and pay lower wages.
When Labor’s immigration spokesperson, Kristina Keneally, advocated lower immigration over the weekend, I was initially encouraged by the union movement’s response.
President of the ACTU, Sally McManus, initially flagged support for cutting temporary migrant workers:
Too many employers had been using the temp visa system to avoid hiring locals & to exploit people whose visa status & security depended on their employer. The result has been serious & systemic wage theft https://t.co/a07XIwI6ac
— Sally McManus (@sallymcmanus) May 3, 2020
However, she then quickly backflipped, demanding taxpayer welfare for more than one million temporary migrant workers at a potential cost of billions:
Nearly one million workers are excluded from all support during this pandemic. This could and should be fixed today by the Government. #NoWorkerLeftBehind pic.twitter.com/Yjy5ROjFUR
— Sally McManus (@sallymcmanus) May 4, 2020
Today, McManus has doubled down at The Guardian:
The Morrison government has “no excuse” not to extend jobkeeper wage subsidies to foreign workers…
The Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary told Guardian Australia “it looks like there will be an underspend of the $130bn… “There is now no argument in terms of cost,” McManus said…
McManus argued the government should expand eligibility “and not use artificial and unfair restrictions on who gets it and who doesn’t” to keep costs down.
Extending welfare to temporary migrant workers would obviously incentivise them to stay in Australia to compete against local workers for scarce jobs.
Sally McManus’ calls to provide welfare to temporary migrants to stay in Australia also completely contradicts the initial purpose of Australia’s temporary migration program.
This program was initially developed to help plug “skills shortages” across the economy. They were also marketed as giving the economy flexibility: the migrant take could quickly expand when skills were needed but then in times of strife those on temporary visas could return to their home countries. Temporary visas were supposed to act as a shock absorber for the Australian economy.
Now that the Australian economy is facing its biggest decline since the Great depression, and unemployment is surging (see above chart), it is time for this “flexibility” to be allowed to take effect and a large chunk of the 2 million-plus temporary migrants in Australia to return home.
Keeping immigration artificially high will only worsen the unemployment queues and further depress wages.
The union movement should never have allowed the migrant workforce to grow so huge in the first place. They should have been screaming from the rafters.
It’s high time for unions to stand up for Australian workers, not behave as useful idiots for the capitalist elites that gain from big migration.
