Explainer: What is happening to temporary migrants at work?
Right now, migrant workers in Australia are facing a ‘crisis of exploitation.’[1] Two thirds of temporary migrants are paid less than the minimum hourly wage – yet less than ten percent take any action to recover their stolen wages, even though they know they’ve been underpaid.[2]
This doesn’t come down to a handful of bad employers or workers not knowing their rights. This is happening because of the structural inequalities built into the migration system. It comes down to visa insecurity.
Visa conditions limit people to working certain hours for particular employers, exposing them to the risk of visa cancellation, detention and deportation – catastrophic consequences faced by no other workers. Workers have to rely on their bosses to stay in Australia, creating a fundamental power imbalance at work. An increasing number of workers have no access to permanent residency at all. There are 3 million people in Australia on temporary visas today – and tens of thousands more with no visas at all.[3]
Migrant workers have always organised against underpayment, harassment, bullying and unsafe conditions at work. Now they are organising to fundamentally change the visa system.
The First Step – Visa Protections
All workers in this country deserve the same rights to call out and act against bad behaviour at work, without fearing the consequences for themselves and their families.
As an immediate first step, the government must commit to visa protections for migrant workers who organise and take action against their bosses.
These must include a:
1. Guarantee against visa cancellation for workers whose bosses have broken the law; and
2. A Workplace Justice visa to allow workers to stay in Australia and work without restriction, while they take action against their bosses.
These are the bare minimum protections to remove the immediate threat of visa cancellation and deportation which hangs over migrant workers every day.
The Next Step – The Fight for Permanency
But this is a small step towards the future that migrant workers deserve.
Exploitation will continue while some people go to work each day with their future in Australia on the line: who have to depend on their employers for their very right to stay in the country, or whose visas dictate where and how they can work. People in these situations find themselves at the wrong end of the power imbalance that drives exploitation.
People who are living and working across Australia should not be stuck on temporary visas for years on end, locked out of basic support if they get sick or hit hard times. Exploitation will not end while some workers remain disposable and deportable.
Irrespective of visa categories or status, there must be visa security for all.
This page was last updated on 21 June 2023.
This summary was prepared by Sanmati Verma, Managing Lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre.
sanmati.verma@hrlc.org.au
[1] SBS News, ‘Many migrant workers face a ‘crisis of exploitation’. Will these reforms end it?’ 5 June 2023 https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/many-migrant-workers-face-a-crisis-of-exploitation-will-these-reforms-end-it/yi235bd38.
[2] Migrant Justice Institute, ‘Wage Theft in Silence: Why Migrant Workers Do Not Recover Their Unpaid Wages in Australia’ (2018) https://www.migrantjustice.org/publications-list/report-wage-theft-in-silence.
[3] ABS, ‘Temporary Visa Holders in Australia’ https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/people-and-communities/temporary-visa-holders-australia/latest-release.