If it takes power at the May 21 election, the Opposition is planning to overhaul the Pacific Islands seasonal farm worker programs, while dumping the Morrison Government's agricultural visa, which extended to South-East Asian nations.
The Morrison Government has today introduced legislation in response to two Migrant Workers' Taskforce recommendations to make it an offence to pressure temporary migrant workers to breach their visa conditions and to create a new power to ban employers that underpay them.
The underpayment of migrant workers significantly worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a large Unions NSW audit revealing 88% of a sample of foreign language job ads in the state offered below award wages.
A 61-year-old former economics professor has been fined $31,000 for underpaying two visa holders employed at a Korean grocery, a court finding he deliberately arranged for them to receive as little as $10 an hour.
The FWO is urging 7-Eleven to enter into a second compliance deed, following "substantial improvements" to payroll and time-recording systems and audits leading to backpayments of more than $102,000 under its first arrangement.
A restaurant unfairly dismissed a 457-visaholder cook who had an imposter sit his English competency test and secretly recorded conversations after reporting it for alleged exploitation, the FWC has held.
A judge has ordered more than $200,000 in compensation and penalties against two underpaying former company directors at the same time as roundly rejecting FWO attempts to characterise the dental technician involved as a "vulnerable" visa-holder.
The former director of a liquidated dental practice has been penalised and ordered to backpay a 457 visa worker thousands of dollars after a second adverse underpayment judgment involving his company.
Labor has pledged to immediately increase the minimum wage for skilled overseas visa workers to $65,000 - a rise of almost 21% - if it wins the Federal election
In a reminder to employers to double-check before assuming a worker has abandoned their employment, a business must pay $7000 to an ex-employee after it withdrew his visa sponsorship over an unexplained three-day absence that turned out to be GP-recommended stress leave.