At least 3 unions who represent some of Australia’s lowest-paid workers are relying on foreign talent to promote their cause.

United Voice employ nine people on 457 visas while two other unions — the Australian Education Union and the Shop Distributive and Allied Employee's Association - have also hired staff on the temporary skilled work visas, according to a report in The Australian.

 “The revelation that multiple unions have employed subclass 457 visa holders is an act of incredible hypocrisy and duplicity given the long-term campaign the union movement has waged against the 457 program,"Assistant Minister for Immig¬ration and Border Protection Michaelia Cash told The Australian.

The Immigration Department has revealed that “workplace relations adviser is the most frequently sponsored occupation’’ among unions, “with the other sponsored occupations being copywriter, organisation and methods analyst, database administrator, and training and development professional’’.

Most of those on union-sponsored 457 visas are from Britain and the US, with workers also coming from India, The Netherlands, Canada and Singapore, answers¬ to a Senate inquiry into Australia’s temporary work visa programs revealed.

The Fairwork ombudsman is trying to make ‘inroads’ into migrant communities through its newly appointed team of Community Engagement Officers, whose aim is to protect foreign workers on the one hand and help deport illegal workers they find along the way, on the other.

The FWO says its recently launched program aims to “foster new relationships with international student bodies and multicultural communities…to ensure migrant workers, overseas workers, international students and employers are aware of their workplace rights and responsibilities,” declared the statement from the FWO.

The program will also be used to uncover illegal workers. In June, the Fair Work Ombudsman joined with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) to form Taskforce Cadena to jointly combat the incidence of fraud and exploitation involving foreign workers in Australia. One of the stated aims of Taskforce Cadena is to utilise intelligence from a range of sources to identify and investigate major targets of interest.

The FWO statement noted that visa-holders now account for 11 per cent of all requests for assistance received by the Fair Work Ombudsman. Last financial year, the Fair Work Ombudsman recovered $1.6 million in underpaid wages and entitlements for visa-holders – up from $1.1 million in 2013-14.

FWO Ombudsman, Ms Natalie James said that the Fair Work Ombudsman has been active in this area for many years and understands that visa holders can face a number of barriers to understanding and enforcing their workplace rights.  “Youth, language and cultural differences, concerns about their visa status all contribute to these barriers and can also make them more vulnerable to exploitation,” she said.

The school which generated about $1million in revenue per year from students was found to have had extensive breaches of regulations governing overseas students, according to a report on the ABC.

It remains unclear what will happen to the visas of 70 students of the school - some who reportedly paid $18,600 per year in tuition fees.

According to the ABC, documents filed with Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), indicated the failure of some students to sign in for classes for weeks at a time was not investigated by the school, despite visa requirements that stipulate they must sign in twice a day. It said that the teaching of English language was also a particular concern, with audits from 2010 to 2014 revealing the school failing to comply with VCAA standards.

The Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA) ordered the Melbourne Senior Secondary College (MSSC) to shut down because it failed to comply with a number of matters in the Education Services for Overseas Students Act which included the following:

•Inadequate records on working with children checks for adults overseeing, living with up to 14 students under 18

Article for submission to the Migration Alliance Newsletter

 Working in partnership to combat human trafficking and slavery in Australia

Australian Federal Police

We are all familiar with the old saying that: “We are haunted by the ghosts of our past”. 

This well-worn phrase has been shown to have considerable truth and force recently. There has been story after story in the news media about high profile people being caught up in allegations of sexual abuse involving decades-old incidents. One need look no further than the stories that have been reported about allegations relating to former British Prime Minister Ted Heath and to the television performers Rolf Harris and Bill Cosby. And of course the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has unearthed accounts of incidents that occurred many years ago. 

These types of stories are not only pervasive in the news media. In fact, just at the end of last week, on 7 August 2015, a decision was handed down by the Federal Court of Australia that demonstrates, very powerfully, that there really is no escape from the ghosts of one’s past where sexual offences are concerned, and that events that may have seemed to have been buried and forgotten can come back to haunt a person with an absolute vengeance!