Australia not so lucky country for migrant workers

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.

Strength In Diversity - The Australian Working Class

 

(Above: Victorian dairy workers, members of the United Workers Union display unity in strike action in October)

Written by: Ned K. on 3 November 2023

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has recently released its Population By Country Of Birth Report for 2022. The Report recorded that the overseas-born people in Australia represented 29.5% of the total population. 

According to the Report, by international standards, Australia has a high proportion of overseas-born people. The USA has 15.3%, Canada has 21.3 % and France has 13.!%.

The USA figure may be much higher if undocumented migrant workers, arguably the backbone of the US economy are included.

Although people born in England are still the largest migrant group at 961,000, the number of migrants born in England is steadily declining. The number of migrants born in developing countries continues to increase. Indian-Australians born overseas number 750,000, with large numbers of people born in China, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Nepal also looking to build their lives in Australia. The total number of overseas-born people in Australia is 7.7 million out of a total population of about 26 million.

There are overseas-born migrants in smaller numbers from many other developing countries from Asia, Africa and South America.

Most of the new migrants have to work for a living and make up a significant portion of the working class. They come from different cultures and have experienced different economic and political lives in their countries of birth. 

For generations since British colonial invasion of this continent, the ruling class has hoped new migrants and First Nations People turned out as a good source of cheap labour for the needs of capitalism's industries. 

In the age of the internet and now Artificial Intelligence, the nature of work is constantly changing but the ruling class still needs workers to create surplus value from which profits are derived.

New migrant workers are awake up to this and participate in collective action with other workers in pursuit of common goals as cost of living continues to rise. Sometimes they participate in workers struggles despite their visa status and threats from some employers of dobbing them to Immigration Department authorities for working when their visa has expired or is awaiting extension.

Many new migrants from developing countries in particular were ineligible to vote on the Voice Referendum but empathize with First Nations people because of their own experiences in their country of origin. 

This empathy with First Nations people's struggles and the experiences in their countries of origin strengthens the working class as a whole.

This in stark contrast to the ruling class and their press barons like the Murdoch group who look for every opportunity to weaken and divide the working class.
 

 

When Workers Unite, Bosses Tremble!

 Written by: Ned K. on 23 September 2023

Poultry Workers Getting Organized. Strike Against Corporate Greed And Rising Cost Of Living 

About 1,000 workers at Inghams Poultry processing plants in WA and SA went on strike on Friday 22 September. They are demanding wage increases that keep up with the rising cost of living and better working conditions.

Inghams have increased profits by about 70% in the last 12 months with the increased profits coming from the surplus value created by these workers. Apart from the 70% increase in profits, the workers on the picket line when interviewed by the mass media said that the CEO had a 9% salary increase. 

Inghams' wage offer after months of negotiations with the workers' Union Delegates was well short of their demands for 6% per year, just to keep up with inflation.

As with most strikes, wage levels are not the only issue. Delegates said work intensification, repetition strain injuries and increased fatigue levels had reached unbearable levels. 

Before taking the strike action, workers spent months building their own networks and organization on the job to ensure that the required Protected Industrial Action Ballot was supported by a big majority of workers,

There are many strike actions by workers across many different industries despite the limitations of the Fair Work Act  enterprise bargaining laws

What is important about the Inghams workers' strike is that the the company's strategy of hiring new migrant labour from diverse cultural backgrounds (a divide and conquer strategy) has met its match. 

The strength of the workers in this dispute lies in the unity of a diverse workforce.

When workers unite, bosses tremble!

Farm Workers Getting Organised Against Big Wage Swindle

 Written by: Ned K. on 19 December 2020

Wage swindles with farm workers being paid piece rates less than even the minimum legal Award wage have been occurring for years. 

However, as Bob Dylan would say, "the times they are a-changing". Even now in 2020 there are reports of farm workers being paid piece work equivalent to $3 an hour (Australian Financial Review 16 December 2020).

Farm workers have traditionally been covered by the Australian Workers Union but they fell into the trap of focusing organising resources on bigger industrial worksites where there were large concentrations of workers in full-time employment and with a long tradition of unionism. Steel works, aluminium smelters and foundries were the priority and farm workers, whether picking mushrooms, tomatoes, potatoes or cherries for the Xmas dinner tables were put in the too hard basket. 

The majority of farm workers do not have continuous employment in the one place all the year round but follow the harvest times of many different crops. Many are new migrant workers but there is a significant percentage of farm workers who have worked in the industry for years.

Some of them started to look elsewhere for support to get organised and to put an end to the wage swindles and poor working conditions they had endured for years. 

The former National Union of Workers (NUW now UWU) had a more strategic approach and realised that farm workers are the first stage of the supply chain while at the other end of the supply chain, giant retailers like Coles and Woolworths  and large food exporting corporations have been the beneficiaries of the farm worker wage swindles. 

Progressive leader elements in the NUW, especially in Victoria, decided to answer farm workers' call for help, and to extend their organising resources from food processing factories and warehouse distribution of food products to farm workers.

Migrant communities in Victoria had seen that the NUW Organisers supported the migrant workers in the Baiada poultry processing strike in Victoria several years ago and this gave them hope that if they stuck together, these Union Organisers would support them too.

Farm workers across Victoria and South Australia started joining the NUW and won concessions from labor hire companies through collective action and media exposure of their poor working conditions. 

Workers won the right to become regular seasonal workers, with better accommodation and wages instead of piece work, including overtime. Most important of all though was that farm workers in their Union built enough collective strength to prevent the employers from paying them far below the minimum wage. Employers were utilising a provision in the Horticultural Award which enabled them to determine what "the average competent employee" meant for purposes of a farm worker being paid the Award requirement of piece work rate at least 15% above the Award minimum.  
Even a farm worker who an employer did deem to be an "average competent" employee would still not have to be paid overtime and there was no limit under the Award as to how many hours a farm worker could be made to work in a day or week.

As more and more farm workers organised, and the Australian Workers Union lost more and more members through plant closures and the decline of metal manufacturing industries, the Australian Workers Union, too, are focusing more on farm workers as potential union members.

This December the Australian Workers Union lodged an application with the Fair Work Commission to vary the Horticultural Award so that every farm worker, whether on piece work or an hourly wage, has to receive the minimum casual rate of $24.80 per hour.

Shame of the Gillard Government

When reporting on the Union's application to vary the Award, the Australian Financial Review revealed that when the Gillard Government was in office, it intervened in a Fair Work Commission case in support of there being no minimum rate for piecework farm workers in the Award!

Success in the Australian Workers Union application for all farm workers to receive a minimum wage will be a result of years of struggle by farm workers themselves and the support they have received from progressive leaders within migrant communities and the rival union, United Workers Union.

The more far-sighted corporations benefiting from the wage theft and resulting higher profits that have prevailed for years in the fresh food supply chains may be hoping that the Australian Workers Union's application to vary the Award minimum rate for piece workers will put the brakes on rising farm worker militancy.

Hopefully both Unions' leaderships work together in the interests of tens of thousands of farm workers to lift their wages and conditions above just the minimum Award standards, With over 100,000 farm workers in Australia and total union membership in the sector well below the 50% mark, there is plenty of room for both Unions to play a progressive role.

 

Overseas Students In Desperate Struggle To Survive

Written by: Ned K. on 25 April 2020

The other day I heard from a new migrant friend the story of two overseas students from a small Asian country who got stood down from their jobs in the kitchen of a city cafe. The cafe stood all the workers down due to the Corona Virus shut downs ordered by the government. The overseas students had no income to pay rent or buy daily necessities because they were not eligible for Job Seeker or Job Keeper.

They heard by word of mouth from visa workers from their home country that there was work picking in the Riverland near Mildura. They had no idea where that was but asked a friend if he would drive them to the Riverland. All they knew about the job was that they had one day to get there and they were given the address of a share house in the Riverland. They would be working for a visa worker who came from the same country as them.

 

The friend agreed to take them up to the Riverland share house. When they arrived, they found the house was accommodation for about 10 workers. They met their boss and he told them that he worked for a farmer who had oranges that needed picking but they would not be ready for another week. They would be paid $10 per hour and work a ten-hour day. The rent was $100 per week per worker. As the oranges were not yet ready to pick their boss had organised some other laboring work for them on the farm for the first week. He said he got paid $15 an hour by the farmer.

 

The overseas students were not happy with the situation but stayed because $10 an hour without tax was better than starving and sleeping on the streets.

As far as I know they are still there and likely to stay there for at least a few months.

 

My friend said that international students are often portrayed in the media and by government as all being from rich families and that all they have to do to get money is contact their parents back home and the money flows. He said this is far from the case and the majority of overseas students do get assistance from their families to pay the up-front tertiary fees for their first year study.

 

However, for living costs day to day they have to work. This is consistent with some of the research which finds that about 80% of overseas students need to work to live.

 

That they and other temporary visa holders who work are denied Job Keeper or Job Seeker is unjust say the least. It is also something that will come back to bite the lucrative export industry of overseas student exploitation that underpins the business of Universities who have come to rely on them for finances but who have abandoned them in their hour of need.

 

Cheap Labour and Regional Migration Schemes have a long history in Australia

Ned K.  8 January 2019

2019 is an election year in the federal parliamentary three-year cycle. Immigration is likely to be blown up out of all proportion as an election issue. One idea already thrown up by the Morrison Government is forced regional migration as a condition of entry into the country for some migrants. This is nothing new in Australia’s migration history. At its core, such policies by parliamentary parties are designed to provide cheap, compliant labour to various sectors of the economy. Going hand in hand with such policies have been the slave labour type schemes enforced on First Nations peoples.

South Australia, the colony set up by small ‘l’ liberal British imperialist interests was not immune to policies designed to provide cheap labour sourced from new migrants, particularly in agricultural areas. In the 1870 -1900 period, Irish single women were promised a life of ‘milk and honey’ as domestic workers on farming properties, particularly in the south east farming and grazing region.

What is perhaps less well known is South Australia’s British Farm Apprenticeship Scheme started just  before the “war to end all wars” of 1914-18. The SA Government at the time adopted a government apprenticeship scheme model previously trialled by imperialist Thomas Sedgwick in New Zealand and Canada. According to researchers Oppenheimer, Anderson and Paul in their book “South Australia On The Eve Of War”, the scheme “outsourced the government’s financial commitment to the state’s farmers” rather than a state government invested training farm that would educate young migrants before they looked for employment on farms in the state.

The apprenticeship scheme required no upfront payment by the farmers and required the apprentices to stay with their masters for the duration of usually a four year contract.

The Peake Liberal Government of the day lauded the scheme as superior and cheaper than an adult migration scheme and thought that the lack of experience in farming work of the apprentices would enable the farmers to mould them to get the labour they wanted at cheap rates.

A brochure put out by the government did not gild the lily when it described the type of work as “hard, dull and monotonous at times...scattered and distant from towns”.

In 1914 though, a severe drought, outbreak of WW1 and high unemployment collided to force many of the apprenticeships to be declared null and void. Many of the young apprentices were forced to stay on the farms to work for wages far lower than the legal minimum adult wages for agricultural labourers. Others left the farms and looked for labouring work such as cutting wood or building dams on the Murray River. Some wanted to return to England but there was no assisted passage back to “the home country” for them so they were stuck in poverty in Australia.

What has all this got to do with Australia in 2019, more than 100 years later?

The imperialists who rule Australia today and their parliamentarians who manage the system for them, have refined their cheap labour schemes over the years with ever changing visa schemes which “encourage” new migrants to “behave” to have any chance of permanent residency or citizenship. Any “undesirables” among migrants on visas of one type or another are sent back to their country of origin no matter what fate awaits them there, rather than as in the early 1900s, forcing them to ‘sink or swim’ in their new ‘home’.

In essence though, the migration schemes of the early 1900s and those of current day are worked out by the imperialists and the governments of the day on the basis of what in their view will best assist the maximisation of profits and accumulation of wealth to the minority owners of capital.

It is worth keeping this in mind as Australians will be exposed to all sorts of migration scheme policies by parliamentary hopefuls between now and the federal election which will probably be in May  this year.

Overseas students want “Jobs you can count on” too!

Ned K.
         
Following the racist, anti-immigration mantra of US imperialism's mouthpiece, Donald Trump, sections of the ruling class in Australia represented in the media by the Murdoch press are extending their anti-immigration attacks to overseas students.

 

On Tuesday 17 July, 2018 Murdoch's The Australian included an article blaming "surging overseas student numbers" for increasing net immigration to more than 240,000 per year and for "putting downward pressure on wages and pushing up accommodation costs in major cities".

 

The Australian refers to a report from Bob Birrell of the Australian Population Research Institute which claims that overseas students could "game the immigration system to extend their stay for years."

 

Shock horror! Fancy migrants coming to Australia and wanting to stay here!

 

Isn't this the main trend in migration to Australia for at least 100 years that many who come to Australia for whatever reason want to stay and build a decent life here?

 

From the Tampa experience in the early 2000s the reactionary, racist elements of the ruling class and their spokespersons such as Howard, Abbott, Dutton and Pauline Hanson have ranted that asylum seekers are not the right type of people to come to Australia echoed in a milder form by Gillard and Rudd and now Shorten. Then they broadened their attacks to minimise the opportunity of migrant tradespersons on temporary work visas to extend their visas or become permanent residents.

 

Now their focus shifts to overseas students. Birrell goes so far as to say that "overseas students able to work for 20 hours a week were 'the elephant in the room'...the major factor driving poor working conditions and low wages in the entry level labour market area".

 

This is turning facts on their head. Poor wages and conditions in the "entry level labour market area" are caused not by overseas students or migrant workers but by the ruling class who are compelled by the very nature of capitalism to maximising profits and minimising labour costs. The big corporations fight tooth and nail and all sorts of tricks to oppress and swindle the "entry level labour market area" in jobs such as farm workers, hospitality, labour hire workers to compensate these same corporations for the better pay and conditions they are forced to concede to their "core" workers who are often better organised.

 

Overseas Students Need “Jobs You Can Count On”

 

This pattern of super exploitation or swindling of migrant workers is not new and it is a misconception to think that overseas students are "happy little vegemites" regarding their working conditions and pay. Union campaigns in a range of industries have featured a high level of activism by overseas students with the 7-Eleven underpayment campaign being the one given the most publicity in recent years. Much more work needs to be done by unions in this area who need to find ways to become more in reach for migrant workers in general, overseas workers in particular. 

 

Contradictions Within the Ruling Class

 

Some sections of the ruling class must surely be nervous, to say the least, about blaming overseas students for the ills of the capitalist system. The overseas student temporary migration in Australia is a growth export industry for some sections of the ruling class. Many capitalists profit from it, including the ever-expanding universities. Many of the building industry cranes in the capital cities sit on student accommodation high rise buildings. Construction companies and developers haul in big profits. The accommodation industry charges high rent which forces many overseas students to live in over-crowded "dog boxes" masquerading as “apartments". The food services, department stores and supermarket industries benefit financially as well: as strange as it may seem, overseas students have to
eat and cloth themselves too! What would happen to the "growth" strategies of cities like Adelaide if the hundreds of thousands of overseas students from mainly developing countries stopped arriving each year? 

 

Shorten Joins the Anti-Migrant Chorus

 

What does Bill Shorten the aspiring Prime Minister have to say about all this? His comments about the growing number of temporary visa holders in Australia, many of whom are overseas students, sounds like a 21st century version of Labor's attacks on Chinese migrants during and after the gold rush days of the 1850s and 1860s who were marginalised and required to pay a $10,000 (today's equivalent of the 1840s ten pounds) fee to land in the port of Melbourne!  Many were temporary migrants and those that stayed were not
welcomed to join unions.

 

In language reminiscent of those times, Shorten is reported as saying, "What they (meaning the Liberals) don't tell everyone is that under the Liberals, the number of people coming here temporarily with visas that give them work rights in Australia has blown out to 1.6 million".

How will history judge these remarks? What will come out of the reactionaries' mouths when climate change migrants, not overseas students become the growth sector of migrants to Australian shores?

One thing is sure: our future as a united working class lies in the defence of the rights of all!

Baiada Attacks Workers AND Farmers

By Duncan B. 

Poultry processor Baiada announced late last year that it was closing its Victorian operations. This left 16 chicken farmers without supply contract and limited options to find other uses for their huge chicken sheds. 100 workers are also without jobs with the closure of Baiada’s Laverton North plant. A company spokesman blamed “marketing conditions” for the need to consolidate Baiada’s national processing operations.

Baiada has been involved in a price war with its rival Ingham’s. Fears have been expressed in the industry that chickens will be the “new $1 milk” as Coles and Woolworths are cutting the cost of roast chickens sold in their supermarkets.

Baiada is a privately-owned Australian company whose operations include poultry broiler and breeder farms, hatcheries, processing plants, feed milling and protein recovery. It operates in NSW, Vic and SA and employs about 2200 workers. Baiada supplies chickens under the Lilydale and Steggles brands to all the major supermarkets, and fast food companies such as Mc Donalds, KFC, Red Rooster, and Pizza Hut.

Baiada has been in trouble repeatedly in recent years.  For example, in 2010, the Fair Work Ombudsman investigated allegations that a Baiada company, Adelaide Poultry, was underpaying its workers. The company was found to have contravened workplace laws and was subjected to an “enforceable undertaking” made under the “Fair Work” Act.

In 2011 the ACCC commenced federal court action against Baiada  alleging misleading and deceptive conduct  and making misleading representations that meat chickens were “free to roam around in large barns.” In 2013, Baiada was hit with $400,000 in penalties over this case.

In 2015, Baiada was in the news again over allegations that migrant workers supplied by labour hire companies were being exploited in Baiada factories. The Fair Work Ombudsman found that the company was paying workers on holiday “417 class” working visas about half the lawful minimum wage and that they worked up to 18 hours a day without paid overtime. The workers were paid in cash and forced to live in sub-standard housing. Baiada agreed to repay up to $500,000 in wages that the contractors failed to pay workers, even though it did not directly employ them.

This brings us to Baiada’s latest attack on its workers. In March this year, Baiada announced plans to reduce the wages to the award rate for new casual employees taken on through labour-hire firms. These workers would be paid about $25 an hour rather than the union-negotiated rate of over $38 per hour. About 40% of Baiada’s casual staff are contract employees, so there are substantial savings to be made for the company. Baiada originally tried to impose the wage cuts on all of its casual staff, but backed down in the face of union opposition. 

Companies such as Baiada are able to reduce wages by exploiting a loophole through the use of labour-hire companies which allows them to get around the union-agreed site rate. This creates a “second class” of workers who receive up to 40% less than the worker next to them for doing the same job.

Murray Goulburn to Close Factories

Dairy co-operative Murray Goulburn has announced that it will close dairy factories in Rochester and Kiewa (Vic) and Edith Creek (Tas), with an expected loss of 360 jobs. Murray Goulburn has suffered a 20% reduction in milk supply since it reduced the farm gate price to its suppliers last year.

The actions of these two agribusiness companies once again demonstrates that there is a firm basis for unity between farmers and the workers who process agricultural products in the dairy factories, mills and food companies.

Super-exploitation of migrant workers in the hotel industry

Contributed

Super exploitation of migrant workers in Australia is nothing new in Australia. It has existed almost as long as the super exploitation of Indigenous people in Australia. All workers under capitalism are exploited in that they sell their labour power and create surplus value for the capitalist from which profit is derived. Through collective struggle since 1788, workers in Australia have won minimum standards enshrined in the capitalists’ industrial laws to prevent being thrown in to a state which Marx called “miserable wretches”. However alongside these minimum standards of engagement by the capitalists, there have been many instances of capitalists ignoring their own laws and ‘super exploiting’ workers. Migrant workers in particular are often the victims of this.

The other day I met some Nepalese migrants who worked cleaning rooms in a large multinational owned hotel. Some were overseas students, some were partners of overseas students. Their working goal in Australia is to work continuously for two years to improve their chances of a successful application for permanent residency status. They said they had checked to find out that they were being paid the minimum award rate of about $18 per hour. The problem was that they were only paid for four hours a day and the work they had to do took eight hours!  They were expected to clean and tidy 16 rooms in four hours, one room per 15 minutes! They were effectively working for $9 per hour!

On a few occasions some of them stopped working at the four hour mark and went home, rather than working in unpaid time. However the company they worked for, a large overseas owned labour hire firm, deducted a couple of hours pay from their pay packet for not cleaning all the rooms. So even though they worked four hours on these days, they were paid less than four hours for not completing all the work. They were told by the manager they had to finish the work in four hours, that was the job. The industry standard, itself too demanding, is half an hour cleaning time per room.

Modern Forms Of Slavery Still Exist Right Here In Australia

When I heard their story, I thought that this was outrageous, but nothing new in the hotel industry.

What they then told me was even more outrageous. In fact, a modern form of slavery.

They said their supervisor and some other hotel workers they knew were in Australia on what were called “sponsorships”. I asked them what did that mean?

They said the “sponsors” are business people who agree to provide work for a new migrant worker for two years, provided the new migrant pays the sponsor an amount of money equivalent to the wages being performed for the sponsor. Once the money is paid to the sponsor in advance of work performed, the sponsor then pays back the money to the worker in the form of a wage, including a gross and net pay after tax. So on the surface, it looks like a normal capitalist–wage labour relationship, but in fact the worker gets nothing, accept two years guaranteed ‘employment’ and a hoped for ‘passport’ to permanent residency.

What does such a migrant worker live on if their ‘wage’ is paid back in full to the boss or so-called ‘sponsor’?

The Nepalese people I met said that these workers have to work a second job, usually cash in hand, in order to survive.

They said they wanted to get out of their situation but knew that the odds are stacked against them. With great courage, they said they were going to contact the relevant union as a first step to improving their situation.