Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Bill 2017 is a lame attempt by this government to deal with a real crisis that we're facing in this country, and that is the crisis of wage theft that is rampant across our economy and rampant across a wide variety of industries and is, as a result, seeing the gross exploitation of far too many working people in this country. The bill is a very belated effort by this government to deal with the unbelievable exploitation of workers that we witnessed occurring at the 7-Eleven chain of stores a number of years ago. It's been years since this exploitation was revealed by media outlets, and, for years, the Labor Party, trade unions and many others in our community have been calling this government for action. Now, finally, we see the government coming forward with legislation, which, to some extent, deals with these issues but doesn't go anywhere near far enough.

I'm very proud of the fact that the workers who were exploited by 7-Eleven were represented by my former law firm, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers. I pay tribute to the efforts of Giri Sivaraman and his team at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, who took on these cases on a pro bono basis and, as a result of the legal action taken on behalf of these workers, have managed to extract, literally, millions of dollars in underpayments to workers, many of whom came to Australia on temporary visas. That work has gone some way to rectify the massive losses that these exploited workers suffered.

In the interest of time, I will give a couple of quick examples of the kinds of conditions that people working at 7-Eleven were experiencing. The first claimant commenced working at 7-Eleven on a bridging visa B. They worked at three different 7-Eleven stores between 2011 and 2014. In total, this claimant was underpaid over $180,000, including interest. At one store, the claimant was required to work many weeks unpaid, which the franchisee characterised as training. At each store, he was paid below the award rate. He was paid somewhere between $10 and $12 per hour, well below the award rate. He was not paid overtime, was not paid penalty rates, was not paid for all the hours worked and wasn't provided with rest or meal breaks. For some time, the claimant worked 60 or 70 hours a week between all three stores. At one point in time, he worked 110 hours in a week. The claimant received deliberately falsified pay slips that halved the hours he actually worked. He was robbed twice in one day by a man with a serrated knife, and he was forced by the franchisee to work the next day. So he was robbed by an armed robber twice in one day and then his franchisee at 7-Eleven turned around and robbed him again by underpaying him.

The second claimant that I'll mention worked at two different 7-Eleven stores between 2005 and 2006. This claimant was underpaid by nearly $100,000, including interest. At one store, he was required to complete 32 hours of unpaid alleged training. Money was deducted from his pay if customers drove off without paying for fuel. Can you imagine the cruelty of an employer who would actually do that to someone! Not only would the employer underpay them and not pay them for alleged training but, if their customers drove off without paying for fuel, they would also take that out of the worker's pay packet. At each store, this person was paid below the award rate, not paid over time, not paid penalty rates, not paid for all hours worked and not provided with rest or meal breaks. At one store he worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for over six months. That's not to mention the fact that this particular claimant's wife was extremely ill with stage 4 cancer.

These are the kinds of stories that emerged as a result of media coverage of the disgraceful behaviour of 7-Eleven and the complete lack of responsibility taken by their senior management, the franchisors, in the behaviour of their franchisees. The thing I remember most from talking to my former colleagues at Maurice Blackburn who were working on the case was that, no matter how bad you thought the behaviour of 7-Eleven was—and it was absolutely abominable behaviour—in many instances, for those people they were acting for who were working at 7-Eleven, that was their second, better paid job, because they were working elsewhere getting even more exploited than they were at 7-Eleven. That gives you some idea of the scale of wage theft and exploitation that is happening in this country. But it's not just 7-Eleven where this is happening. We've seen many other exposes through the great work of people like Adele Ferguson and her team at Fairfax Media, exposing the behaviour of Caltex, BP, Pizza Hut and Domino's.

Some of the worst instances we've seen have been in the meat-processing industry, particularly a company called Baiada and the way that they have been treating their workers in North Queensland. This is not an issue that is restricted to one particular company or one particular business model being franchised; this is something happening right across our economy and right across every kind of employment relationship that we see. I have seen it myself, both on the Gold Coast and in Central Queensland, those being the two major parts of Queensland that I represent, and it's really got to stop.

The fact that this is happening beyond one business tells you that this is actually a business model that is being adopted by a large number of companies right around this country, and the only way they are staying in business and the only way they are delivering profits to their owners is by ripping off highly vulnerable workers. As I said, this bill is the government's alleged attempt to respond to this problem.

Now, I do welcome the changes that the government is making in this bill, but they go nowhere near enough to deal with the scale and breadth of problems that we are seeing happen in our economy through exploitation of vulnerable workers. This bill doesn't address the problems that we are seeing around sham contracting, where many workers, who any objective test of whether they are an employee or not would say that they are an employee and therefore entitled to the rights that come with employment—leave, superannuation and all sorts of other rights that come with being an employee—but instead these people are being treated as contractors and denied rights. The bill does nothing about that.

This bill does nothing about phoenixing, which we're seeing not only in the construction industry but in security, in cleaning and in a whole range of industries. This is where people are employed by one firm and underpaid—or not paid at all in some cases. Then the business is shut down overnight and the assets moved to another company, which starts operating the next day under a different guise, and the people who have worked there and have gone unpaid end up losing out.

This bill does nothing about the problems that we're seeing around exploitation of people through labour hire. Obviously, that is something I have spoken about on a number of occasions in the chamber, particularly in relation to the problems that we have seen in Central Queensland in the mining industry. People are being sacked from permanent employment and the very same day mining companies are bringing people on through labour-hire arrangements, paying them less pay and giving them worse conditions. This bill does nothing about that. It does nothing to stop the incredible growth in casualisation that we're seeing right throughout the economy as well, where people are finding it harder and harder to find permanent work. And of course this bill does nothing whatsoever to reverse the recent decision of the Fair Work Commission to cut people's penalty rates, which will have a dreadful effect not only on working people's budgets but on the economy overall.

Labor is going to step up to the challenge and is going to put forward some amendments in this debate that do try to deal with some of these other problems that we're seeing in the economy. We're going to put forward amendments which prohibit unreasonable demands for money by employers to prospective employees. This bill does go some way to stopping employers from demanding money be paid to them by current employees, with the threat hanging over them that if they don't pay that money they could be deported, lose their visa or lose their job. But this does nothing to stop employers from making the same kinds of threats and demanding money from prospective employees. Recently, we saw instances where a Domino's franchisee demanded around $150,000, I think it was, from someone in order to get a job. If they didn't pay that money, they weren't going to get the job and they were being threatened with immigration reprisals. One of the amendments that Labor is also going to put forward for this bill is to extend the liability of franchisors to labour-hire and supply chains.

This bill does do some good things in making franchisors liable, in some instances, for the actions of their franchisees. If their franchisees are underpaying their workers then, in some instances, franchisors will be held responsible. But we know very well—and every week new cases surface, whether they be in Central Queensland, the Gold Coast or other parts of Australia—that host companies are engaging dodgy labour-hire firms to bring people in on below-award illegal rates of pay and are getting away with it, because the workers who are brought in by these labour-hire firms are too scared to complain because they are in fear of losing their jobs. Currently, there is nothing in Australian law that stops a labour-hire company from doing that unless those laws are enforced. And currently there is no obligation whatsoever on a host employer to make sure that a labour-hire firm that they engage is doing the right thing and paying people the appropriate wages and conditions.

Big employers should not be allowed to get away with using labour-hire firms to underpay their workers. If a big firm—whether it be a mining company, a retail chain or whoever—engages a labour hire firm which then goes on to pay someone below the legal rates and conditions, then the host employer, the person who has engaged the labour hire firm, should be held responsible. The bill does nothing about that. It is time we took steps to correct firms who are doing the wrong thing. I'm very pleased that Labor will be moving amendments to that effect, and I look forward to joining the debate when we get to those amendments.