INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
“I am aware of all the laws in Australia and were being paid a lot less with no sick or annual leave and no weekend loadings at all. All rates were flat. I worked so many hours there. Now when I think about those days, I feel pity on us how we were robbed and trapped.”
— International student from Nepal, in NSWIt has been ten years since the 7-Eleven scandal brought migrant exploitation into the centre of Australian public life.[i] The revelations of systemic wage theft across that franchise, and the many industries it foreshadowed, prompted the convening of the Migrant Workers’ Taskforce,[ii] and a wave of parliamentary inquiries.[iii] In the years since, successive governments have introduced new sanctions for underpayment, expanded the Fair Work Ombudsman’s enforcement powers, criminalised intentional wage theft and, under the current government’s first-term agenda, begun to address the proliferation of insecure work and the immigration settings that leave temporary visa holders dependent on exploitative employers.[iv]
And yet a decade on, underpayment of migrant workers in Australia remains rampant.
This report presents the findings of the 2024 National Temporary Migrant Work Survey, the first national empirical study of migrant work experiences since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the largest survey of its kind ever conducted in Australia. Between July and August 2024, 9,963 people who had worked in Australia on a temporary visa shared their experiences with us in six languages, across every state and territory and across every major industry that employs migrant labour. Of these, 8,370 reported in detail on their lowest paid job in 2023–24, giving us an unprecedented window into the working conditions of international students, backpackers, graduate visa holders, employer-sponsored workers, and others who keep substantial parts of Australia’s economy running.
The headline finding is sobering. Employers paid two-thirds of migrant employees less than they were owed under the Fair Work Act, and more than a third were paid below the National Minimum Wage. Figures from this survey suggest international students alone may be shortchanged approximately $3.18 billion in wages every year.
A decade of reform has not shifted the basic fact that unlawful underpayment is the norm, not the exception, in the jobs that temporary visa holders do in this country. The enforcement gaps identified in this report are not a niche problem. They distort competition across the economy: the businesses that exploit migrants continue to gain unfair advantages over those that comply.
For the first time, this report reveals the mechanics of a single, integrated system of exploitation. Underpayment, insecure employment structures, and record-keeping noncompliance cluster together and reinforce one another. Employers use ABN misclassification, casual engagement and misleading payslips to underpay migrants and cover their tracks. As cash has receded from the broader economy, these other methods have moved in as alternative ways of paying migrants ‘off the books’.
This is the third national survey of its kind conducted by the Migrant Justice Institute, following our 2016 survey reported in Wage Theft in Australia and companion report Wage Theft in Silence, and our 2020 study, International Students and Wage Theft in Australia, which examined underpayment among the student cohort specifically.[v] In this report, for the first time, we can see not only how much migrants are being underpaid, but how the system of underpayment now works.
Together with prior MJI reports on seasonal workers under the PALM scheme, the inaccessibility of the courts, and the limits of the Fair Work Ombudsman, these studies make up a decade-long body of evidence on the structural drivers of migrant worker exploitation in Australia.[vi]
This report is the first in a series drawing on the 2024 survey. Forthcoming reports will address: migrant workers’ knowledge of their rights; the effectiveness of reporting channels and the reasons the majority stay silent; migrant workers' experiences of indicators of forced labour; and their experiences of unsafe work and workplace injury. Further publications will include companion Practical Guidances for business, and reports that dive deeper into findings on the experiences of international students to support effective responses by the international education sector.
Tackling the structural drivers of migrant exploitation has long sat in the too-hard basket because the system itself was hard to see. It is now visible in how employers structure work to evade the Fair Work Act, the ways in which violations cluster together, and in what regulators and businesses can look for to detect underpayment and deeper exploitation.
The Albanese government’s first-term reforms were a necessary start, but the evidence in this report makes clear that migrant exploitation in Australia has not been solved. It has evolved.
Ten years on from the Migrant Worker Taskforce, this report is an account of the current migrant exploitation trap and of how to dismantle it.
References
[i] '7-Eleven: The Price of Convenience' Four Corners (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 31 August 2015) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-30/7-eleven-promo/6729716; Adele Ferguson and Sarah Danckert, Revealed: How 7-Eleven is ripping off its workers (Report, 31 August 2015) https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2015/7-eleven-revealed/.
[ii] Australian Government, Report of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce (Report, March 2019).
[iii] Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Hidden in Plain Sight: An Inquiry into Establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia (Report, December 2017); The Senate Education and Employment References Committee, Corporate Avoidance of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Report, September 2018); The Senate Economics References Committee, Inquiry into Unlawful Underpayment of Employees' Remuneration: 'Systemic, Sustained and Shameful' (Report, March 2022); Office of the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Be Our Guests: Addressing Urgent Modern Slavery Risks for Temporary Migrant Workers in Rural and Regional New South Wales (Report, 2024).
[iv] Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Act 2017 (Cth); Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Act 2022 (Cth); Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Protecting Worker Entitlements) Act 2023 (Cth); Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Act 2023 (Cth); Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No 2) Act 2024 (Cth); Migration Amendment (Strengthening Employer Compliance) Act 2024 (Cth).
[v] Bassina Farbenblum and Laurie Berg, Wage Theft in Australia: Findings of the National Temporary Migrant Work Survey (Report, November 2017); Bassina Farbenblum and Laurie Berg, Wage Theft in Silence: Why Migrant Workers Do Not Recover Their Unpaid Wages In Australia (Report, October 2018); Bassina Farbenblum and Laurie Berg, International Students and Wage Theft in Australia (Report, June 2020).
[vi] See https://www.migrantjustice.org/reports.