PART 10 - FORCED LABOUR AND UNDERPAYMENT
Part 10 — Forced Labour and Underpayment
Migrants' experiences of modern slavery indicators rise as underpayment deepens
Modern slavery and forced labour are criminal offences in Australia.[i] Commonwealth and NSW laws require many Australian businesses and public entities to report on their efforts to identify and address modern slavery risks in their operations and supply chains. The Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner and others are pressing for reporting entities to have mandatory risk-based due diligence obligations in relation to modern slavery in their Australian operations.[ii]
The Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department has issued a detailed guidance for reporting entities which includes a list of ‘indicators of modern slavery’ with the observation that a ‘combination of these signs may indicate a person is in a situation of modern slavery and that further investigation and assessment is required’.[iii] The International Labour Organisation has also issued lists of operational indicators of forced labour to assist labour inspectors, law enforcement, businesses and others to identify potential victims and trigger further investigation.[iv] Each of these sets of indicators spans across a range severity: some are unlawful labour practices, others are criminal conduct in themselves in most jurisdictions in the world. Forced labour involves 3 elements: work/service, lack of voluntariness, and menace/threat of penalty. However, the lists of indicators provide no hierarchy and there is no formula for determining which indicators taken together are likely to amount to forced labour in any individual case.
Given that the legal definition of forced labour requires lack of voluntariness, we asked participants whether they had ‘experienced any of the following problems in any job in Australia’, framing each as coercive employer behaviour rather than general employer noncompliance:
Made to work in unsafe conditions,
Made to work for no pay or less pay than you were owed,
Made to work very long hours or different hours than agreed,
Made to work for long periods with no breaks,
Made to work full days for more than 14 days without a day off,
Had to stay in a job that I wanted to leave,
Tricked about the job and it was worse than promised,
Threats of harm to me or my family,
Threats of reporting me to Immigration or the police,
Made to pay back some of my wages in cash to my boss,
Unwanted touching, sexual comments, sexual harassment,
My boss or someone else held my passport, or
Not allowed to leave my accommodation or my workplace without permission.
3,096 participants (34%) indicated that they had experienced at least one of these.
When they did, we asked in what job they had that experience. In a subsequent report we will examine participants’ experiences of these forced labour indicators in detail, including the co-incidence of different indicators in different contexts and among different migrant worker cohorts.
For the purpose of this report, we examined only forced labour indicators that were reported in the migrant’s lowest paid job, in relation to underpayment.
We found that, the greater the extent of underpayment in the migrant worker’s lowest paid job, the more likely the worker reported the following indicators in that job: being made to work for long periods with no breaks, being made to work for long hours or different hours than agreed, being made to work in unsafe conditions, having to stay in a job they wanted to leave, and/or having been tricked about the job and it was worse than promised.
We also found that most cases of more severe labour conditions that are indicators of forced labour were also more frequently reported by migrants who experienced more egregious underpayment.
These findings underscore that forced labour sits on a continuum of labour noncompliance. They also suggest that businesses that want to systemically prevent and detect forced labour in their operations and supply chains must seek to identify and address systemic underpayment and other forms of labour noncompliance.
Businesses that want to systemically prevent and detect forced labour in their operations must seek to identify and address systemic underpayment and other forms of labour noncompliance.
“Some companies or factories make the employee work for 12 hours straight and pay the same rate. This is happening with my friend who work in a factory. In my case, I work in two cleaning company, one company ... gives me the same rate, I have go early at 4 am and there is no holiday in weekend. They pay the same rate on weekends and government holidays. They want the work to be prefect... I wanted to complain but was worried as it may affect others working same like me. They are taking advantage of the international students as we can't voice due to fear of repercussions. Truly modern day slavery.”
— Male international student from Bhutan, 36, in QueenslandThe more workers are underpaid, the more likely they are to experience key forced labour indicators
Participants who experienced the 5 most common forced labour indicators, as a proportion of participants in each bracket of underpayment below individual minimum entitlements (n=7,497)
The more participants are underpaid, the more likely they experience particularly serious (and often criminal) forced labour indicators
Participants who reported more severe but less common forced labour indicators, as a proportion of participants in each bracket of underpayment (n=7,497)
References
[i] Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) div 270-271.
[ii] Office of the Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Recommendations to strengthen Australia's modern slavery laws (Initial position paper, 30 January 2026); Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Concluding Observations on the Sixth Periodic Report of Australia, UN Doc E/C.12/AUS/CO/6 (23 March 2026); Walk Free, 'Time for action as Australia considers mandatory due diligence on modern slavery' Walk Free (Article, 17 February 2026) https://www.walkfree.org/news/2026/time-for-action-as-australia-considers-mandatory-due-diligence-on-modern-slavery/.
[iii] Attorney-General's Department, Commonwealth Modern Slavery Act 2018 Guidance for Reporting Entities (Guidance, May 2023) 81-83.
[iv] International Labour Organisation, ILO Indicators of Forced Labour 2025 revised edition (18 November 2025); International Labour Organisation, ILO Indicators of Forced Labour (1 October 2012). See also ILO-IOE, Combating Forced Labour: A Handbook for Employers and Business (3rd ed, 2025).