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Chef in kitchen
Experts say wage theft and other workplace exploitations are ‘incredibly common’ for those on temporary visas in Australia. Photograph: AleksandarNakic/Getty Images
Experts say wage theft and other workplace exploitations are ‘incredibly common’ for those on temporary visas in Australia. Photograph: AleksandarNakic/Getty Images

Suffer in silence, or risk speaking up? Exploited migrant workers face perverse dilemma

This article is more than 2 years old

Migrants in Australia say they can lose their visas if they report an employer – and a government bill that is meant to protect them won’t help

Michael* has called Australia home for nearly a decade. He has a partner and a child here, friends and a community, a career he wants to pursue. But he has consistently faced a perverse choice: tolerate exploitation for job security, or risk losing his protections and right to stay.

“My first employer used to bully me, all the time. I was forced to work long hours for no overtime, sometimes more than 60 hours without any more pay,” he tells Guardian Australia. “At first I accepted to work like that, because I cannot do anything: I am relying on the visa.”

“I have a son who is three-and-a-half years old. I sacrifice everything to give him a better life in Australia. I never give up hope because of my son’s future. But the government’s policies have taken all my efforts.”

The government’s proposed migration amendment (protecting migrant workers) bill has been promoted as addressing migrant worker exploitation by establishing new criminal offences for “coercing … migrant workers to accept exploitative work arrangements”. It would also introduce broader ministerial powers to ban companies that break the law from sponsoring migrant workers.

But critics argue the bill is fundamentally flawed because it carries no whistleblower protections for workers who expose their own exploitation. A Senate inquiry will hear evidence on the bill Wednesday morning.

Michael arrived in Australia from a south-east Asian country in 2013. Guardian Australia is choosing not to publish his real name nor his home country out of fear it could jeopardise his visa and right to remain in Australia.

He arrived in Australia to study cookery and after graduating took up a job as a chef on a 457 visa. But he says because his visa was tied to his employer he was vulnerable to exploitation.

His second employer made him work “11-12 hours a day for six days a week, but only paid for 38 hours”. A third employer was bought out and restructured, leaving him again looking for a new job.

Michael said each time he moved to a new employer he had to “start again” on his progression towards applying for permanent residency.

“We live with uncertainty all the time,” he says. “We work hard, we do everything right, but we keep getting punished.”

Michael’s fourth employer was a large hospitality company running several venues. He felt the security of a large firm would militate against the kind of exploitation he’d known in Australia.

But he was shocked to learn, shortly after starting, that the company was being investigated for systemic underpayment of migrant workers. Workers were invited to present evidence of their own exploitation, “but nobody did, because we could lose our visa, we might be deported”.

When the company later lost its rights to sponsor migrant workers as a result of adverse findings against it, Michael, and all of his colleagues on visas, were once more forced to start again.

“To look for an appropriate sponsor is not easy. I am so scared and depressed the same problems will happen again.”

Michael says the precariousness of his situation, and that of thousands of others of migrant workers, impacts not only the workers but their partners and families.

He said there is a disincentive for migrant workers to report an employer that is exploiting them. As their visa is tied to that employment, they suffer if the employer is found to have acted improperly: their visa is cancelled. This forces them to find another employer, often on a timeframe as short as 60 days, and can imperil their right to stay in the country.

Exploitation ‘incredibly common’

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.”

The government’s migration amendment bill ‘seriously underestimates the scale’ of worker exploitation, the ACTU says. Photograph: Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images

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 said the proposed law, currently before the House of Representatives, was “fundamentally flawed” and failed to address the systemic factors that led to migrant worker exploitation.

“It relies on vulnerable migrant workers coming forward to report exploitation and cooperate in an investigation, without providing them with any incentive or protection to do so. This could expose migrant workers to adverse immigration consequences, including the cancellation of their visa”.

The Migrant Justice Institute’s submission cited a 2019 survey of over 5000 international students that found 38% did not seek help for a problem at work because they did not want “problems that might affect my visa”.

When introducing the bill to parliament, the immigration minister Alex Hawke said it “will help to level the playing field” for migrant workers.

The proposed new offences for companies – against coercing migrant workers to accept exploitative arrangements – were recommendations of the 2019 migrant workers’ taskforce report. Hawke said they were “designed to penalise the misuse of our migration program, and migrant workers, and create a safer environment for temporary migrant workers looking for employment”.

Michael said his experience has undermined his faith in Australia, and his chance of a future here.

“We always think Australia is a wonderful country, but what is happening to us makes us so disappointed, so depressed, so stressed all the time.

“We worry all the time – maybe we made a mistake.”

  • Michael’s name has been changed to protect his identity

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