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Immigration Daily News One in ten foreign workers underpaid and denied entitlements by Australian employers
One in ten foreign workers underpaid and denied entitlements by Australian employers
Employers hiring foreign workers will need to pay more attention to compliance obligations to avoid fines and/or losing their sponsorship rights. The Fair Work Ombudsman told the ABC that there has been ‘a spike’ in the underpayment of foreign workers in recent years.
Recovering $23 million last year from employers underpaying workers is only the tip of the iceberg, according to a report on the ABC. Thousands of workers, including Australians, are being underpaid wages or denied entitlements by their Australian employers, the ABC claims, with a rising number of complaints coming from overseas workers being denied their entitlements.
Cafes, restaurants and pubs, followed closely by construction, the retail trade and service industries including contract cleaning are listed among the main jobs where underpayment is rife. But it was the spike in complaints from overseas workers - including 457 visa holders - that prompted Fair Work Ombudsman Ms Natalie James to launch an investigation.
"One in 10 of our complaints are now coming from visa holders. That's significant and that is a trend that's on the up," she told the ABC.
In 2012, her office recouped $67,000 in underpaid entitlements for 77 visa holders. That skyrocketed the next year to $262,000. Last year $345,000 was recouped for 309 foreign workers. About 50 cases a year end up in court with the rest being resolved by the office of the Fair Work Ombudsman.
ABC cites the case of Vince Brown who came from England to work as a chef. Having been underpaid, he took his case to the Fair Work Ombudsman.
"If I actually totalled up the figures for the first three years I was in Australia, it could be in excess of $30,000 I was entitled to, that I didn't get," Mr Brown told the ABC. He was one of around 16,000 workers who were underpaid more than $23 million last financial year but among the lucky ones to get their money back through the work of the Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James.
Ms James noted that Australian employers are struggling to comply with their obligations with those in the hospitality, construction generating most complaints. She told the ABC that most disputes were ‘not intentional’. Regardless of the intention, however, underpayment remains a breach of the law.
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Cafes, restaurants and pubs: Australians frequently reject those jobs because they don't like the type of work. I doubt very much that the 457 statistics would be outstandingly different for Australian casual and part time workers in those occupations. The problem is not the owners gouging. The problem is that many of those businesses are financially marginal. The payments demanded by Fair Work can only be paid if the owner cuts the profit margin so much that the business is unsustainable. People desiring to come here on 457s really need to be educated by their migration agents about exactly what they are to receive before they even apply for the visa. Unfortunately, the Fair Work rules are so complicated that employers can hardly understand them, and it is ludicrous to think that the migration agents could even begin to do the job of educating clients.
Idle Dream: Perhaps Fair Work and the Department could prepare a pro forma work sheet that a prospective 457 applicant might actually understand and use. On the plus side, if the departments did that, all the owners of cafes, restaurants and pubs might look to it for some sense of what they should be doing. The situation is disgraceful, but its origins are complex and not simply the fault of 457 employers. In addition, there are many instances of cooperation between employers and employees at the visa application stage where the intentions of the parties are to circumvent the visa regulations for mutual benefit. Unregistered agents are well known for this sort of tactic that preys on people willing to pay and suffer to get into Australia.