Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes:

(a) the recent media reports and the Fair Work Ombudsman (Ombudsman) finding about the abuse of employees, including Working Holiday visa holders (subclass 417) and Temporary Work (Skilled) visa holders (subclass 457) by Baiada Poultry Pty Limited (Baiada);

(b) complaints against Baiada included that employees were being underpaid, forced to work extremely long hours and required to pay high rents for overcrowded and unsafe employee accommodation;

(c) Baiada and its labour-hire contractors failed to work with the Ombudsman during the inquiry into its employment practices, including:

(i) refusing permission for Fair Work Inspectors working on this inquiry to access the factory floor at its worksites;

(ii) failing to provide the inquiry with any ‘significant or meaningful’ documentation on the nature and terms of its labour contract arrangements; and

(iii) producing inadequate, inaccurate and/or fabricated records to inspectors;

(d) the findings of the Ombudsman are damning of the governance and employment practices of Baiada; and

(e) that these reports and the employment practices of Baiada have caused significant community concern which must be addressed; and

(2) calls on the management of Baiada to immediately address the findings of the Ombudsman and bring its employment practices up to community expectations.

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you have a seconder for the motion?

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There have been a number of very important reports by the ABC—in particular, 7.30, Lateline, and Four Cornerswhich have highlighted for the public's benefit and for the benefit of this House some of the really concerning practices now going on in Australian workplaces. And we are not just talking about some corner deli or some backyard operator or somewhere at the very end of a very long subcontracting chain in the clothing industry, where we once found these sorts of breaches of workplace laws—not that that excuses them. We are now finding them at the heart of the food production chain, not very far away from our major food producers, from our major retailers. That is a great concern to the Australian public. In particular, we find the egregious use of contract labour and the abuse of people who are on either 417 backpacker visas or 457 skilled migration visas. Both these visa categories are now subject to practices that no Australian, whether conservative or progressive, Labor or Liberal, would fail to be concerned about.

The member for Hinkler was here before, and, to give him his due, he was on Four Corners calling the public's attention to these issues, asking the government and the ombudsman to act. That is a credit to him, but it is not a credit to the government that they have no speaker on this motion today. It is not credit to the government that they do not have much to say on this. And it is not a credit to the minister, who hides behind the workplace ombudsman and simply says, 'Well, I'm not going to comment on any of these issues.'

We are now seeing very concerning findings by the workplace ombudsman on these issues, and they are backing up the concerns raised on Four Corners, on Lateline and on other ABC programs. I commend the statement of findings to the House. We should all read it, because it outlines a set of arrangements that are just not fair—verbal agreements from the extensive list of labour hire operators which source most of their workers though 417 working holiday visa holders through Taiwan and Hong Kong. I would suggest that this is an abuse of that visa category. These are not people who are visiting our country for the purposes of a holiday but, rather, are caught up in an intricate web of labour hire operators, both here in Australia and back home in Taiwan and Hong Kong. These people are being manipulated and underpaid—paid per kilogram of poultry processed rather than per hours worked. That has the effect of employers not paying night shift penalties, not paying weekend penalties and not paying public holiday penalties.

We have six principal contractors that are subcontracted to seven other second-tier entities, and then further subcontracting down to up to 34 separate entities in total—no written agreements, and a model that was based on 'trust'. During the course of that inquiry, four of the six principle contractors and 17 of the other subcontractors ceased trading. So what we have here is a major Australian company, Baiada Poultry Pty Limited, having its whole supply chain literally collapse as a result of an investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman, and that should concern every Australian.

We have recently had exposes on Australia Post contractors where not only were they treating workers appallingly but there were very interesting practices going on in regard to vocational training. We have seen Thomas Foods International the subject of claims in The Weekly Times. This is a very concerning matter. It undermines the integrity of our immigration system, it undermines the integrity of our workplace laws and the government need to act. They should set up a task force and they should put some resources behind it. (Time expired)

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand today to speak to this motion and also to second it because I believe it is a very important issue that this parliament needs to deal with. It is very disappointing that nobody from the government benches is speaking in favour of this motion, because it not only highlights a problem that we have within our poultry industry but also highlights the work that an arm of government has done to try and clean up this behaviour.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has done an investigation into what is going on in Baiada and has exposed some pretty horrific things, such as workplace breaches, going on within Baiada and the enterprise. In summary, the Fair Work Ombudsman inquiry found that there was noncompliance with a range of Commonwealth workplace law. It found that there were very poor or no government arrangements relating to various labour hire supply chains. The inquiry found the exploitation of a labour pool that predominantly comprised overseas workers in Australia on 417 working holiday visas. It outlined this exploitation as being significant underpayments, extremely long hours of work, high rent for overcrowded, unsafe worker accommodation, discrimination and misclassification of employees as contractors. These are some pretty major breaches of our Fair Work Act and workplace relations in this country.

The investigation has been done by the independent umpire. Their report has been tabled, yet we have failed to see any action by Baiada. In fact, they are refusing to let Fair Work inspectors go into some of their facilities. We have also failed to see a response from this government calling on this company, now we have the independent report, to clean up their act.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. What I am learning as I meet more and more people in the poultry industry and in the food processing industry is that unfortunately this is happening too often. In my own electorate, the chicken and poultry processor Hazeldene’s is also under investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman. Similar issues have been raised in this particular investigation. I have met with some of the workers that are working for subcontractors and the stories that they have told me are not only heartbreaking but disappointing. It is disappointing that it is occurring in this particular poultry factory when we already know, because of another report, that there are recommendations that this behaviour be cleaned up.

What I have heard from some of these workers who work for the Hazeldene's contractor—and this has just been a genuine, one on one conversation—is that they receive their payments in an envelope with a cash figure on it; they do not receive pay slips. They have told me that they get picked up in Melbourne and they are bussed to Bendigo. They get picked up at five o'clock in the morning and they do not know their end time. They work processing chicken until the work is done. Some of them are paid piece rates; they are paid by the kilo. There is no such thing as piece rates in the poultry processing industry. There are piece rates in the horticultural picking industry, but there are not piece rates currently in the poultry industry.

These are some of the stories that I am hearing about a local manufacturing facility in my electorate. I acknowledge that Hazeldene's employ about 700 local workers, and it is great that they provide local employment, but there is a problem with some of the contractors that they use within their facility. I would like to see Hazeldene's, before we have the Fair Work Ombudsman's report into what is going on, come out and commit to the people working for the contractors that they are going to work to resolve some of their grievances.

There is a problem in our poultry industry, and given that it is happening across the board and not just in Baiada, and given that we have a Fair Work Ombudsman's report into the functions of Baiada, I believe that it is time that the government step in. We want to be a country that has good quality food processing. That does not just mean in the quality of the food; it also means in the working conditions of the people in these facilities. We must ensure that every worker in Australia is treated with respect and paid their correct entitlements. We should not be condoning the exploitation of people here on temporary work visas, and the government needs to act.

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier speakers have referred to the failure of the government to provide speakers to deplore the abuse of these people or, indeed, to defend the minister, who is operating the system of subclass 400 visas which is facilitating this abuse.

However, one government member has certainly gone on the record. One has to wonder whether it is because of local pressure and media coverage and whether she actually intends to do anything in regard to lobbying the minister, who seems more intent on protecting the big end of town in Shanghai than protecting Australian workers. The member for Gilmore recently commented—and I think she has belled the cat—that, 'I believe companies should advertise extensively in Australia before being allowed to employ anyone under a 457 visa.' She was responding to the exposure of a situation in Manildra, where $400,000 has been recovered by the CFMEU. The workers, after a full year, earned $14,000. They worked 10 or 11 hours a day, six to seven days a week, paid $13,800 for board and lodging and $8,000 for transport and food, and there were, of course, importantly, no safety instructions in Chinese. The contracts were not even located in Australia. Independent scrutiny by Australian investigators could not be undertaken because the contracts were not available. As I say, there were no instructions in Chinese. There is no investigating unit within the department of immigration to actually look into the way in which these various subclass 400 visas are being utilised, and there is, of course, a government which is on the verge of trying to further widen this through trade deals and to undermine the need to inspect, the need to have skills or the need to have English.

In the same manner that we see with Baiada, a family who enjoy a comfortable lifestyle in leafy Castle Hill, we see the same thing on a broader expanse in this country. There is Australia Post, whose manager earns a mere $4.8 million a year and, through taxpayers' money or operations money, can put 96 people on planes to the London Olympics at a cost of $2.5 million. He still runs an operation where we have seen, in the last few weeks, revelations that, despite the fact that Australia Post supposedly ensures that its contract prices cover paid superannuation, penalty rates and holiday pay, a variety of students were not receiving that from the contractors. This is the important point. These so-called labour market or labour hire companies are just a subterfuge by these large Australian corporations—whether it is Baiada, whether it is Australia Post, whether it is various building construction companies—to basically escape their responsibilities and say, 'Oh, it's nothing to do with us. We didn't know anything about this. We have basically relied on these companies. They are decent people' et cetera. At the end of the day, they are doing it to ensure a lower cost structure for themselves. It reached a stage with these contractors in Australia Post that one person had 30 bundles of mail at his house because he had to sort them out in his own time. There is another other thing that is happening—I am having it myself— and that is mail being undelivered by contractors because (a) they have limited English or (b) they have not got enough time to deliver. These students with Australia Post had reached a stage where, despite the restriction of working only 20 hours a week, they were basically compelled by the contractor-employer to work full time. That is another question that has really got to be asked of the minister for immigration: what is going on with these student visas?

To return to Baiada, another disturbing aspect of this issue was the role of the Mayor of Griffith who pronounced himself to be a 'friend of Baiada'. Mr John Dal Broi was very prompt to say that it was understandable that the Ombudsman was not allowed access to the factory because even he, as a friend, on occasion had been denied admission because of biosecurity, and said it was 'preposterous', because of the hours at which these people were working, to think that they might be able to facilitate inspection visits. Despite his friendship, his own council in Griffith had closed down a house where 20 people were living.

So it is not only the wages; it is not only the conditions; it is the sexual exploitation of people; it is the overcrowding; it is the cutting them off from contact with the wider society; it is the making sure that they have no rights of access or appeal. So I very much commend this resolution from the member.

Debate adjourned.