Overseas farm workers mainly from South Korea, China an Taiwan..They have been interviewed on the 7.30 report and have stated that after working 10/12hrs a day, they are only getting $7 a DAY. Not only that but they are being charged $120 a week for a mattress on the floor of a house where 25 people are jammed in. The farmers are not to blame but the work contractors who take them to and from jobs that are close to Bundaberg. One strawberry farmer pays his pickers the basic wage, workcover as well and said that they are good workers. He picks his workers himself and he does all the paper work with regard to their employment. The Asian workers have on the whole, poor English skills and so they are ripped off by greedy contractors. A local Australian fruit picker fro many years said on the 7.30 report that she was finding it hard to secure work once they found out she could speak English. IMO the people who are exploiting these workers should be regarded as criminal thieves.. A couple of years ago, some 3000 field workers were found to be without the work visas required by centerlink. Local Blue MP reports that the backpackers are been ripped off with complaints streaming into his office. End of rant Regards Errol 43
And people wonder why local youth can't get a job ? The workers themselves are not naive nor being exploited either, they know exactly what they are doing as do the people that employ them. The farmers who employ such workers are just as liable as well as they know they can get cheap labour as a result. Any foreign worker that has the nous to work undetected after getting themselves into the country illegally is way beyond claiming refugee status or claiming they were being taken advantage of, they know they were breaking the law and are simple economic refugees. They should be on the next plane out.
These types of cases were brought to light about three years ago on the strawberry farms around Caboolture and Wamuran. Also made the news and local media but little in the way of any penalties or prosecutions resulted.
Hang on, are those numbers totally correct? $7 a day is $35-$49 a week depending on if they are working 5-7 days, not even them dumbest backpacker is going to pay $120 a week to earn $49. Or is it $7 a day after paying lodging?
Here's the video and transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4028391.htm The second backpacker (William) says $7/hour / about $300/week.
I did some zucchini picking in Bundy a few years back. Lots of diseased plants needed cutting out. First day was fine, back breaking work for about $14/hr. End of the next day they tell us we're getting paid by the bucket, well that might have been OK if I had've known, then I could go quick and dirty not bothering about cutting out disease and just picking large ones seeing that's what my target forces me to do. End of that day it only worked out to be $6 an hour. Not worth the fuel or dencorub.
And what about the poor Caucasians? We get equally ripped off too. Knew plenty of them in my three months living in Bundy. One girl got paid $13 for her whole days work because she was slow at picking whatever it was and they paid by the bucket. Also depends on if you get work or not, have to pay lodgings regardless. They do pick on the Asians with little or no English and heard almost weekly stories of Euro backpackers standing up to the local farmers to defend them. Witnessed many heated exchanges over how the workers were treated :/
Same thing goes on in England. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Morecambe_Bay_cockling_disaster I used to pick strawberries in the UK, you can't get strawberry stains out of the knees of your jeans. Got paid by the punnet and the locals knew how to screw the system. They would put a layer of green strawberries on the bottom and cover them up with ripe ones so they could fill them faster and not have to do so much work, they would use a double thickness of punnets to increase the weight and everytime you brought in a completed punnet they would clip your card, so the locals found out what shape the clip was in for that day (star, crescent etc.) and one of them would get hold of the same type and they would all punch their cards. We had mostly travellers doing the fruit picking but deeper in kent they had the eastern europeans, sadly they really did get paid next to nothing and then they had to pay for accommodation and their food and drink from the only place they could, the farmers. The cost of food and lodgings was more than they earned so they ended up in debt to the farmer, so they either worked longer hours or were unable to leave to find better paid work. No one in England wants seasonal work, they want to work all year around, prefereably inside out of the rain. The only people who are willing to do it are really desperate. The big supermarkets are squeezing the farmers to get the food as cheaply as possible so they have to cut the costs somehow.
those poor poor farmers Many of them charge the workers $10-$15/day to drive them a few kilometres from their acommodation to the paddock in a minibus. With a full bus that's anywhere upwards of $300 a day.
I picked fruit in bundaberg one week. I only did it cos i lived there for a bit over 2 years and they were picking fruit across the house i was staying in. Worst one week ever. There were alot of asians who couldnt speak english. Im half asian so i fit in.....thats all i know about the evil bundabeg sweat shops, nothing.
Its really f#*ked up IMO. Trivial fines and limited enforcement just means that any penalty is treated as a cost of doing business. I'd also like to know who is buying the produce. I wonder if supermarkets could be encouraged to apply some pressure to growers to ensure workers are treated ethically? Probably they just want the cheapest produce and may be contributing to the problem.
My parents used to give me $0 to do a full day's work fencing. I did get free food, board and other goodies though.
And my parents used to pay $0 as well for washing dishes in the restaurant on weekends Until I went on strike & got $40 a day
