Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this bill protecting workers' rights, the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Bill 2017. Protecting workers' rights is something that we on this side of the House take very seriously and are fundamentally committed to. It should be of primary concern to all of us because we are talking about some of the most vulnerable people—lots of our newly arrived migrants, very low-paid workers, people who work shifts. Protecting these vulnerable workers is of the utmost importance.

Working conditions are considered an essential human right as stated in article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Let's just refresh ourselves on those rights:

1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

It is interesting that we speak about vulnerable workers. There is a bill before the House today and we are debating issues that affect some of the most vulnerable people in society—those that are earning far less money than we earn here and far less money than the average—and yet the other side uses it as a union-bashing exercise. What we just heard from the member for Hughes was exactly that: an opportunity to have a go at unions, bash them, degrade them and talk lowly about them. What we should be doing is ensuring that we are doing everything possible to protect those vulnerable workers, like those people who work shifts, those people who work in assembly lines and the cleaners that perhaps some of us have in our home or offices. These are the vulnerable workers. These are the people this bill is all about, and this is what we should be talking about; not an exercise in union bashing as we have seen time and again from the other side.

Many people are at risk, and those at risk are our vulnerable workers. The term 'vulnerable workers' includes workers most at risk of injury and harm, as well as workers who are at risk of being exploited, being underpaid, facing excessively long hours at work or being held to ransom to accept below-standard working conditions out of necessity. We on this side of the House will always welcome any initiative, such as this bill, that addresses such injustices. Therefore, we welcome this bill because it amends the Fair Work Act in a number of ways to protect vulnerable workers, but it does not go far enough. It goes nowhere near far enough to protect vulnerable workers. It is a start, but we need far more measures in place.

The legislation increases penalties for serious contraventions of prescribed workplace laws, and this is defined as deliberate conduct which is part of a systematic pattern of behaviour. It increases penalties for employers who fail to adequately keep employee records. We have heard of cases where two sets of books are kept: one for the records and one for the employee. It makes franchisors and holding companies responsible for underpayments by their franchisees or subsidiaries. This measure will allow those who know or should reasonably know about contraventions but have failed to take reasonable steps to prevent them to be held responsible. For example, we have seen many companies go to labour hire firms and then wipe their hands of any wrongdoing, saying: 'It's not our fault. We had no idea.' People should be made responsible. It is your duty to understand the conditions that people at your premises, on your job or under your contract are working under.

The legislation also clearly prohibits employers from requiring their employees to make such payments where workers are forced to pay back a portion of their wages. We heard the member for Bendigo talk earlier about a case where members were put in cars on payday, driven around to different ATMs, made to withdraw money and then pay back part of their wages because that was the verbal agreement those workers had with their employers. The employers had to justify it on their books by showing the correct wages, but they could get these workers to do that because they were vulnerable, because they did not know where to go and, more importantly, because there was no union at that workplace to protect them. These are the very unions that those opposite talk about as being some form of monster. You will find that these workers were not covered by any union. There was no union at their workplaces to protect them and, therefore, they became even more vulnerable. So we hear about stories such as the tour of the ATMs where workers had to withdraw part of their wages to pay back their boss.

On this side of the House, we will not stay silent on these issues when we believe the legislation simply does not go far enough to protect these very vulnerable workers. This bill simply needs to do far more than what it currently presents. For example, we are very concerned that the provisions in this legislation are not wide enough. They do not capture situations where Australian employers basically sell sponsorships for working visas to people before they enter Australia, as has been alleged to have occurred at one of the franchises. Labor believes that the prohibition on demanding unreasonable payments from employees should extend to prospective employees as well. We have seen many cases around the country where people are offered the ability to apply for a particular job but part of the application process is to purchase their goods or certain material from the employer or perhaps do a training course that is being run by the employer and then pay them for that training course.

In addition, many stakeholders have raised concerns that the provisions in the bill which give the Fair Work Ombudsman the power to compel people to answer questions do not contain the necessary procedural protections. This is of particular concern with respect to the ABCC's compulsory questioning power—a power that goes way overboard. We must consider how we go about giving a government agency the power to compel citizens to answer questions—citizens who are doing nothing wrong, who are going to their workplaces and speaking to their unions about work issues and about those rights which I spoke about earlier: human rights. Does this bill go far enough to ensure that these powers are balanced and include the necessary safeguards? I do not believe so. I definitely do not believe that this bill goes far enough to ensure that this power is balanced and provides good safeguards.

But then again, what can we expect from a party that has spent many years, whether in government or in opposition, with its only goal, its only focus, to bash the unions, to see the destruction of workplace unions and their negotiations to ensure that workers get good deals, fair deals and better deals? We have seen the witch-hunts that have taken place for decades. Recently we saw the royal commission into unions. This was no more and no less than a witch-hunt to ensure that they could basically dirty up people through this royal commission. We saw that even the chair of that commission had a connection to the Liberal Party. He was invited to go to a Liberal Party fundraising event. That was very questionable. It takes it back to what I said: this was nothing but a witch-hunt for political gain by this government. I think it is a first in this country, where we basically set up kangaroo courts for witch-hunts against our political opponents.

One thing is certain: this bill does not address the breadth of worker exploitation that we have seen under this Abbott-Turnbull government. There is a particular story from my part of the world in South Australia, where a chicken processing factory—there were foreign workers coming to work every day in two or three vans. They were driven into the factory. No-one knew where these people were coming from or where they were going. When other workers tried to question them, those workers were pulled aside and threatened with the sack. Until this day, we do not know who those workers were or where they were coming from. Every morning, the van would turn up with these workers sitting in them—most of the workers were of Chinese origin—and the vans would drive in and these people would go to work. They would not talk to anyone. At night, back in the van and off they would go again.

Labor took a whole range of policies to the last election to stamp out this sort of stuff out. Our policies went much further in protecting workers rights. These included combating sham contracting, where a firm or a company decides to set up separate contracting company and then asks people to reapply for their jobs through this contracting company and sacking people who do not meet the standards of this other contracting company. Licensing for labour hire companies, ensuring that before they were licensed there was a whole process to go through to ensure that these labour hire companies were doing the right thing before they were licensed. Shutting down the practice of companies phoenixing to avoid wage liabilities. Reforming the Fair Work Act to strengthen protections for workers. Criminalising employer conduct that involves the use of coercion or threats during a commission of serious contraventions of the Fair Work Act in relation to temporary overseas workers. And making it easier for workers to recover unpaid wages from employers and directors of responsible companies. We have seen what a big problem this is, how difficult it is for a worker to recover unpaid wages from employers.

At the moment, as I have said, it is very hard for vulnerable workers to prove that they have been underpaid. Too often the employer fails or refuses to provide pay slips. We have seen the repercussions of this affecting many people, most recently in the Centrelink debt recovery debacle that has taken place. Too often workers have found themselves in difficult situations because of poor record-keeping on the part of their employer. Unfortunately, in the Centrelink debt recovery disaster, the onus fell on the employee to provide what they did or did not do. So too bad if you went to your employer and asked for the books or the papers and they refused to give them to you. In order to address this imbalance of power, we need to put the onus on the employer who has breached the act by failing to keep proper records.

There is another glaring omission in this bill. This bill does absolutely nothing to protect a group of vulnerable workers who just recently have become even more vulnerable, thanks to this government's refusal to act. Of course I am talking about the Australian workers who rely on penalty rates.

Time and time again the Turnbull government has demonstrated that it has absolutely no interest in protecting these workers. These are some of the lowest paid workers in Australia. They are dependent on penalty rates on the weekends. As we know, this penalty rate decision could mean that up to 700,000 Australian workers will lose up to $77 per week. People will have to work longer for less pay. Of course, women will be disproportionately affected, and regional communities will have less money to spend in their economies.

We on this side of the House will continue to push our private member's bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017, which will stop the cuts to penalty rates. The fact that the Turnbull government continues to avoid supporting Labor's bill is a clear testament to its lack of commitment to vulnerable workers. We know, as I said, that these people depend on penalty rates. If the government really wanted to do something about vulnerable workers, it would support our bill and ensure that the penalty rates or wage cuts cannot just be determined by the Fair Work Commission. These are things that are negotiated between the workers and their employers— (Time expired)

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