Going by 4 Corners tonight's edition, The fair days work for a fair days pay no longer applies in many farm and factory jobs. Small cities like Bundaberg are missing out on unpaid $$ in wages that should be spent by thousands of backpackers and 471 workers who come to work in our area. This has been going on for years while both the red and blue teams close a blind eye on what is going on...No work visas, no tax file numbers, cash in hand payments with no tax payable. The old story continues, it is no I says the farmer, I hire a contractor to supply my labour. This maybe so, then let the governments local, state and federal bring in laws and regulations so this does not happen. At the moment big corporations are the only ones smiling at this big rip off..Notice not one of them has the gongoolies to appear on the MSM to explain.. Maybe you city slickers will just have to pay more for your fruit and vegetables instead of putting your $ into houses. Watch the show on I view , ABC. REGARDS Errol 43
So is the point the farmers not paying tax? Or is it these back packers not paying tax and then leaving the country with AUD's? Cause if the are being paid under the counter but still spending it in AUS then i do not rally see a problem.
Seems the backpackers would be spending 100% of their wages in the local community rather than 75% and 25% going to the gov to waste. Of course many backpackers will be building up a fund so they can afford to travel to other places.
I think one of the problems was the contractors not giving the workers their money so they couldn't leave. They were promised good pay and conditions and then got here only to be made to live in stables and be paid half of what the australians working with them were paid, if they were paid at all.
That's been going on for years, even to Australians. When I was a teenager some of my friends went fruit picking. They had this happen to them. However it was quickly resolved via subtle threat to burn the barn down.
There was also the fact that the contractors in charge of the workers would either rape the women or tell them they'd get them sent home if they wouldn't have sex with them. Tbh this really makes me want to stop buying Australian grown.
Back in the UK the fruit picking was done by migrant workers. They were bused out to the middle of a field in Kent, miles from anywhere and with no transport and no local shops and no money anyway. They get put up in a barn, all food provided by the gang boss. They ended up owing more to the gang boss for food and accommodation than they could possibly hope to earn and couldn't leave because of their debts to the farm. That's if they didn't end up dead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Morecambe_Bay_cockling_disaster
The 457 visa's are I believe an open door for the slave labour market (as the four corners programme featured). The fact that the 457 visas are still in use today (originally justified to assist in labour shortages during the mining boom) indicates that the interested parties most likely reside in high places with influence that enabled the visa policy to be extended without any credible reasoning. The shonky employment agency's are in the business of human trafficking - not a lot different to the asylum seeker racketeers trafficking people by boat purely for profit. The word "traffic" = Business/Commerce and are clearly making a lot of easy money out of this kind of blatant exploitation right under our noses. The big supermarkets are implicated here with huge profits made at the checkout with food prices high when compared to international pricing. They know their buy price is unrealistic and the implication is that they are aware and therefore complicit. They know, don't care, profit is there God. Great that Four Corners ran this story and quite taken that they have brought this to the surface. Well done.
That's incorrect. 457 visas are a valuable resource for businesses to access workers on a "needs-as" basis. Visas by their nature are just another form of government control over our freedom of movement, 457 visas at least go some way to meeting both the needs of the worker and the employer, thereby encouraging liberty. That some choose to rort the workers is not a fault with the visa system.
Much better than the FIFO workers who can essentially live outside a dying country town for years and not spend anything there, maybe some money on beer and tips for skimpies if it's that sort of place. Id rather backpackers who drive through the middle of nowhere spending (even if meagrley) than that. Whatever you think of some of the opinions on the ABC, nobody else is doing serious journalism. They could stand to do more 4 corners type stuff. Not at the expense of another series of soul mates though, brilliant stuff.
Good for you... just wondered where else you would be sourcing your food from which would have better standards for workers than Australia?
