Migrant Workers’ Centre CEO Matt Kunkel says the exploitation of migrant workers on temporary visas is widespread in Australia, including wage theft. He adds that the migration system allows this exploitation to occur, as migrant workers risk losing their right to remain in Australia if they report such abuse or lose their job.
The federal government’s Migration Amendment (Protecting Migrant Workers) Bill is intended to crack down on unscrupulous employers, but the ACTU says it is “fundamentally flawed” and fails to address the systemic factors that result in such exploitation.
From The Guardian:
Matt Kunkel, the chief executive of the Migrant Workers Centre, told the Guardian the bill would “make a real problem even worse”. He said wage theft and other workplace exploitations were “incredibly common” for those in Australia on temporary visas: more than two-thirds of migrant workers surveyed by the Migrant Workers Centre reported being paid less than the minimum standards, and a quarter reported other forms of workplace exploitation like forced or unpaid overtime.
Kunkel said it was essential temporary visas workers could report abuse without any fear of an adverse outcome.
“Our current migration system has created opportunities for unscrupulous bosses to take advantage of the precarious residency status of migrants,” Kunkel said.
“If they report abuse or lose their job, they may also lose their ability to stay in the country. This means many are forced to make a difficult choice between reporting wage theft or maintaining their employment relationship”…
Kunkel said many of the “so-called temporary migrants” have spent several years or even beyond a decade in Australia, “and are important members of our community”.
A Senate inquiry into the government’s proposed bill previously heard consistent evidence the legislation lacked protections for migrant workers who were already suffering exploitation.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions said the bill “seriously underestimates the scale of the problem” and that wage theft and other exploitations of migrant workers are “endemic and widespread”.
It’s like Groundhog Day.
The fact of the matter is that it has been seven years since the 7-Eleven migrant worker scandal first broke, and since then there has been a never-ending flow of stories emerging about the systemic abuse of Australia’s various migrant worker programs and visa system.
Indeed, the Migrant Workers Taskforce’s 141-page report, released in March 2019, found that “wage underpayment is widespread and has become more entrenched over time”, with as many as half of all migrant workers exploited.
The reality is that you cannot run mass immigration into an economy with a large output gap (that is, too much supply) without wage theft happening. No amount of policing from an under-resourced FWO will prevent it. There are too many scams and they are everywhere, driven by a permanent labour force supply shock as cheap foreign bodies endlessly flow in. This is made worse by the importation of unscrupulous practices from foreign lands, with migrant business owners typically exploiting migrant staff of the same nationality.
Wage theft is not a quirk of the system, it is the system. And if the federal government reboots mass immigration, as planned, we will experience more of the same.
If you want to stop the wage theft and poor wage growth then stop mass immigration. Cut foreign students (by lifting entry standards and financial capacity, and reducing work rights). Cut temporary workers (by dramatically lifting the pay floor). And halve the permanent migrant intake to 80,000 targeted at critical (very highly paid) skills only, alongside family visas.
Failing to do so will only lead to more of the same, with endless hand wringing over stolen wages and exploitation.
