Vegetable growers angry about proposed new migration laws

By Sarina Locke
ABC.
Monday, 13/08/2012


The vegetable industry says it's unfair to expect the growers to double check all the visas of the workers they employ.   

The Federal Government has proposed legislation, the Migration Amendment Bill, out for public consultation.

It's designed to crack down on employers who hire illegal workers.   

Agriculture, forestry and fishing are the worst offenders for employing illegal workers, followed by the accommodation, cafe and construction industries.

But William Churchill, from Ausveg, which represents vegetable growers, says the revised bill would be unfair because the workers are sub-contracted from labour hire companies.

"It's going to be double handling back to growers' operations," he said.

"This is where it's going to cost growers more and more money.

"If they're going to start doing the work of the labour company, then ultimately the labour company just becomes a middle man, not really adding anything to the system at all."

Ausveg will be making a submission to the Migration Amendment Bill within the next three weeks of the consultation period.

In 2008-09, the Department of Immigration located 990 people working illegally.

The National Union of Workers says that, for too long, employers have got away with taking on illegal overseas workers.   

The union welcomes the proposed legislation, which has a "deeming arrangement" where the company has to take responsibility for the workers, even if there is a labour hire company involved.

Charlie Donnelly, national secretary of the National Union of Workers, says companies should not be able to say they didn't know the worker was breaching a visa.

"Often the contract can be a sham arrangement. Often the contractor can have zero capital or very little capital at all," he said.

"So even if they are found to use illegal workers, the fines do not work, and all this is known by the host employer, that they are protected by all this through the contractor.

"The law has no effect on them really because the contractor, even if there's a heavy fine for using the illegal workers, they just shut that company up on the Friday, and on the Monday, they open up under another name."