Written by: Ned K. on 6 October 2024
(Above: migrant workers are an imrtant part of the Australian working class. UWU Facebook page)
Migrant workers have been coming to Australia since the earliest times since British colonialism first invaded the lands of First Nations people in the late 1700s. After the Second World War, new migrant workers from predominantly European countries were able to find full time jobs in government departments, large government projects or in factories in manufacturing industries.
Public housing was more accessible and affordable and with plenty of overtime available, many workers had enough savings for a deposit to buy a modest house in a working class suburb.
The concentration of large numbers of migrant workers in large workplaces enabled them to organize in unions to win relative job security and improvement in wages in conditions. For many, the "Australian dream" of owning your own home which they had heard about when making the decision to migrate to Australia seemed like a reality.
In the 21st Century, there are still many new migrants coming from Europe but also many more coming from Asian, Middle-Eastern, African and South American countries.
They come with the same aspirations of building better lives for themselves and their families as previous waves of migrants. On arrival they also see the expansion of suburbs and strive to become new home buyers. In fact, they see this as more of a necessity than migrants who arrived in the second half of the 20th century because of the collapse of public housing by governments across Australia.
They also find an Australia where full-time jobs for are the exception for their communities rather than the rule.
So they are forced to often work two or three jobs to make enough money to pay the rent and bills, let alone to save enough money for a deposit on a house.
Most of the available jobs for them are via labour hire agencies or with contractor capitalists who themselves live a precarious existence competing with other contractors to win work from governments (who have outsourced work) or large multinational corporations who dominate most industries in an Australia stripped of its manufacturing base by overseas-owned capital and compliant Australian governments.
Despite the difficulties they face, new migrant workers strive to "make it" in their new country they now call home. So they walk the thin line between maintaining and improving their economic situation and economic disaster due to the decisions made by the big corporations in pursuit of profit maximization.
Recently I saw an example of how precarious the situation is for some new migrant families and communities.
About 40 migrant workers were working for a cleaning contractor in a large shopping center owned by a Queensland based property developer. The contractor had won work at the center at a lower price than that of their competitors. The workers employed by the contractor were mainly part time workers with a few full-time.
Many of the workers took the job because it enabled them to work their second job which was also part-time. For example, some would work three days a week in the evening for about 4 hours so they could work a second job in the morning. A few had full time hours and had set themselves up as self-employed in another occupation as well outside of their full-time job. A couple of these workers had been balancing this workload of about 16 hours a day in total which enabled them to save enough to buy and pay off a house, their new home in a new land.
Then one day out of the blue their contractor boss announced a whole revamp of the roster system which reduced the total working hours of the 40 workers.
More of the work was moved to reduce shift rate hours worked and hence income of workers. This was not the main impact though of the changes to the roster system. The main impact was that it meant a lot of workers would have to give up the job completely to keep their second job or the reverse, give up their second job to keep the shopping center job.
Problems for workers did not stop there. Even if some workers were able to keep both their part-time jobs, the new roster system meant they had to re-arrange with their partners who would look after the children, and would the new roster system mean their partner then had to give up their job or cut their hours to make sure one parent at least was able to look after their children. One worker was beside himself. He had thought that with the hard work and long hours of three jobs between himself and his partner that it was safe to really live the "Australian dream" by buying a second house and renting it out as part of building some economic security for his family. Now a roster change was throwing all that up in the air.
Their contractor boss made the roster system changes to make-up lost profits caused by their company winning the contract with the property developer on such a low price that the only way to make a profit was to cut labour costs.
As the workers were only employed under the minimum conditions of the Award, there was no such legal requirement that rosters could only be changed by agreement. All the boss had to do (reluctantly apparently) was go through a process which had the appearance of consultation with the workers and their union.
Workers in their desperation to block the new roster system met with the property developer to see if they'd tell the contractor to leave the rosters as they were.
However, the property owner washed their hands of the whole matter "satisfied" that the contractor had sufficiently "consulted" with the workers.
These migrant workers are very resilient and their communities stick together and support each other and they will live to fight another day.
Wen seeing this happen, I thought what a cruel system is capitalism but also for the large majority of people, what a useless society it is. It just doesn't work for people on so many different levels.
Time is now for an independent, socialist Australia where First Nations and working people run and organize society for the benefit of people, including new migrants like those working for this contractor in the shopping centre.
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