Horticulture boss says industry at risk as labour crimes pay
Sep 1, 2019 Financial Review
The peak industry body for horticulture says law-abiding growers are at breaking point because of chronic labour shortages that have allowed racketeering around visas and asylum applications to flourish.
AUSVEG chairman Bill Bulmer said growers who paid award wages were struggling to remain competitive and looking to exit the industry as rivals paid workers as little as $5 an hour.
Bill Bulmer said the consequence of the labour shortage is that "growers are held captive by unscrupulous operators".
Mr Bulmer said the cut-price workers were the pawns of unscrupulous labour hire operators manipulating a flawed system whereby more than 200,000 people had arrived in Australia by air, applied for asylum and were now on bridging visas.
AUSVEG is calling for a national labour hire accreditation system and a massive crackdown by federal authorities on both illegal workers and those involved in exploitation and underpayments.
Mr Bulmer said farmers trying to do the right thing were sick of the industry’s reputation being tarnished in a climate where successive federal governments had failed to tackle labour shortages, and retailers paid lip service to ethical sourcing.
The Bulmer Farms boss, who employs about 200 people in peak periods, said government attempts to fill the labour shortage with long-term unemployed had been a failure.
“Australian growers will always prefer to hire local workers, but the reality is that not enough locals want to work on farms and forcing them to do so has failed to address the situation,” he said.
“The consequence of the labour shortage is that growers are held captive by unscrupulous operators who profit from the mistreatment of workers.”
Mr Bulmer said the growers who valued their workers and treated them fairly were being driven out of the industry because they couldn’t compete.
“I know of one labour hire company in Western Australia that boasts that they underpay migrant workers because they know they can get away with it,” he said.
Mr Bulmer said the Department of Immigration conducted intermittent farm raids but didn’t have the resources to deal with the problem.
“The government must act to enforce workplace legislation on farms. If people speed, they get a speeding ticket. Surely those who knowingly underpay workers should also expect to get caught and face severe penalties,” he said.
AUSVEG estimates tens of thousands of properly accredited and paid workers are needed to make up the shortfall if the industry is cleaned up, and wants bigger and better visa programs.
The government is in talks about expanding the working holiday visa to countries including India, Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines as it looks to ease labour shortages.
Bulmer Farms, which supplies the processors in Bairnsdale, Melbourne and Sydney, and the fresh markets all down the east coast, is in Timor-Leste and Kiribati at the moment recruiting under the Department of Employment’s seasonal worker program covering the two nations plus another eight Pacific Islands countries.
Mr Bulmer said it was a good scheme but his business would end up paying $35 an hour for workers in wages and associated costs.
“That’s fine if everyone is paying it. But when too big a percentage of the industry is happy to pay $5-$15 an hour, we have a massive problem,” he said.
A survey by the National Union of Workers suggests two-thirds of workers in the fruit and vegetable industry are earning below the minimum wage.
The NUW, which represents farmworkers, is pressing Coles and Woolworths to sign an agreement with the union that requires all fresh food suppliers to comply with ethical labour standards.
Both supermarkets already have sourcing policies which stipulate that suppliers must pay minimum wages and not use illegal workers.
Mr Bulmer said the same requirements should apply across all retail and wholesale avenues.
“The industry is only as strong as its weakest link and if one buyer doesn’t source the product ethically, it undercuts and undermines the entire industry,” he said.
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