Suchergebnisse

Systemic wage theft has long been part of the labour migration landscape in every region of the world. Though every jurisdiction has judicial and/or administrative mechanisms to address wage claims, employers in every country can be confident that very few unpaid migrant workers will ever use those mechanisms to recover their wages. This is because the system is stacked against them at every stage in the wage claim process. This situation is not inevitable. This report provides a blueprint for improving government and court wage recovery processes for migrant workers. It draws on analysis of select, promising initiatives from around the world that demonstrate how many of the barriers that impede migrant workers' access to justice can be overcome. These innovations shift risks and burdens of wage recovery away from workers and onto government and business, and disrupt employer expectations of impunity. The report proposes specific, evidence-based reform targets that can underpin global, national and local advocacy, and support greater coordination among a community of practice working to achieve labour justice for migrant workers.

Wage theft is endemic among temporary migrants in Australia, including international students who are entitled to work up to 40 hours per fortnight on their student visa. This report responds to the need for empirical data on international students' responses to underpayment and other problems they encounter at work and potential effective interventions. It analyses findings from a nationwide survey of over 5,000 international students undertaken in 2019, addressing students' rates of participation in the labour market and their wages in their lowest paid job, considering how these vary among different student cohorts. It also considers the prevalence of other forms of underpayment and record-keeping failures, dismissal after complaint to their employer, accidents and injuries, sexual harassment and overwork. After examining information- and help-seeking among international students who experienced problems at work, the report identifies key reasons why most international students did not seek information or help. Finally, it evaluates international students' knowledge of their work rights and the prevalence of common misperceptions that may contribute to their acceptance or acquiescence to underpaid work. The report lays the foundation for education providers and government to develop more targeted interventions to address exploitation, that are evidence-based and directly respond to international students' lived experiences captured through the survey.

In 2019, the authors conducted a landmark survey of more than 5,000 international students in Australia. The Information for Impact survey sought to gather information on exploitative conduct encountered by international students in housing and at work, and identify effective responses including interventions to empower international students. This is the first of three reports on the survey, focused on international students' living conditions. It reveals that a share house is the most common first home for international students in Australia, and that the overwhelming majority organise this themselves online or through personal contacts. International students in share houses most frequently encountered illegal or poor living conditions compared with other housing types (57% experienced these conditions in their first share house alone). These include: overcrowding; accommodation that is unsafe to live in; paying in advance for accommodation that does not exist; intimidation or harassment by a landlord or another tenant; landlords moving extra people into the accommodation without the student's consent; sudden increases in rent in the middle of a rental period; and unfair eviction. Exploitation and poor housing were not restricted to students in English language or vocational colleges - most problems were experienced by similar proportions of university students. Deception and poor housing conditions were just as common for international students who organised their housing in Australia, as for those who organised their housing from abroad. Problems were most commonly experienced among respondents who organised their share house through social media or a peer-to-peer sharing website. The report concludes with a range of recommendations to governments, education providers and other key stakeholders for developing systemic responses to prevent exploitation and assist international students to address problems when they arise.

Wage Theft in Silence presents findings from the National Temporary Migrant Work Survey -- the most comprehensive study of working conditions and access to justice among international students, backpackers and other temporary migrants in Australia. It draws on responses from 4,322 temporary migrants across 107 nationalities of every region in the world, working in a range of jobs throughout all Australian states and territories. The report reveals that although the majority of migrant workers were paid well below minimum wage in Australia, the overwhelming majority suffered in silence. Indeed, among international students and backpackers who acknowledged they had been underpaid, only 9% took any action to recover wages they were owed. The report considers the institutions from whom those 9% sought assistance, and whether they were able to recover their wages. These include the Fair Work Ombudsman, education providers and unions.The report also presents data on the attitudes and experiences of the 91% of migrant workers who suffered wage theft in silence. Though it is often assumed that most underpaid migrant workers are not interested or willing to take action to get the wages they are owed, in fact well over half of survey participants indicated that they were open to trying to recover their wages. The report presents findings on the range of psychological, practical and other barriers that deterred them from doing so. It concludes that many of these barriers can be addressed through practical measures and policy reform, and it presents a range of recommendations to government, parliament, business and the international education sector to make reporting wage theft possible and rational for migrant workers. These include recommendations for a new or improved process for wage recovery, better resourced support services, and a firewall between the labour regulator and the immigration regulator that guarantees that migrants' visas will not be jeopardised if they report wage theft.

Multinational businesses are facing mounting pressure to identify and address risks of exploitation, trafficking and modern slavery in their supply chains. Digital worker reporting tools present unprecedented opportunities for lead firms to reach out directly to hard-to-reach workers for feedback on their working conditions via their mobile phone. These new technologies promise an efficient and cost-effective way to cut through the complexity of global production, gathering unmediated data on working conditions directly from workers at scale. As the market for these tools grows, this paper contextualises their emergence within the broader political economy of supply chain governance. It presents three sets of concerns about their use that must be addressed by businesses, investors, donors and governments that develop or utilise these tools. First, the quality of data gathered by these tools may be inadequate to reliably inform decision-making. Second, global brands may gather large quantities of worker data to identify legal, reputational and financial risks without addressing structural causes of exploitation or delivering outcomes for workers. Third, large scale collection of data from workers creates new risks for workers' wellbeing and safety.

Digital technology offers the promise to transform the labour migration landscape and to empower workers in new and previously uncontemplated ways. However it also gives rise to a host of practical, ethical and legal challenges. This report takes stock of the rapidly evolving landscape of digital tools that businesses, worker advocates and governments have developed to address exploitative recruitment and labour conditions. It considers the factors that contribute to (or undermine) the effectiveness of these tools, and the risks they create for workers and host organisations. These include legal, financial and security risks. The report considers resourcing and other challenges to sustainability and scalability of digital tools, and approaches to design and implementation that ensure the tools are taken up by vulnerable workers and deliver meaningful outcomes to them. It concludes that technology's transformative potential will only be realized through responsible and well-considered approaches to the funding, development, and implementation of platforms that respond to migrant workers' vulnerabilities and the structural drivers of exploitation.