Employers say they pay the ‘going rate’ but the president of the nascent Korean Workers Union says ‘it’s like slave labour’

For many, the promises vanish, and the exploitation begins, at the airport.

They are young, some overseas for the first time, Korean students and workers, lured to Australia with promises of sun and fun, good, well-paying jobs, a chance to study or a working holiday.



Instead, they find themselves housed in overcrowded hovels, indentured to labour in construction, late-night cleaning, or restaurants, under brutal conditions and for as little as $9 an hour.



In many cases, workers have no contract, and no idea for whom they are ultimately working. In others, workers have their passports seized so they cannot leave.



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The Australian government’s fair work ombudsman says it has uncovered “persistent” underpayment of Korean workers in Australia, mainly in New South Wales, with at least 24 Korean businesses sanctioned in the past two years.



Prof Allan Fels, the head of the government’s newly established migrant workers taskforce, told the Guardian that exploitation of migrant workers in Australia was “systemic … in that it is deeply embedded in the practices of some businesses”.



Several Korean employers caught exploiting their staff have claimed they believed there was a below-award “going rate” for migrant workers, or relied on other Korean business owners to tell them what appropriate wages were.



Meeting with the Guardian in inner Sydney, Joe Haln says he was regularly exploited in a series of jobs across Sydney – and sacked when he spoke up – and says exploitation within the close confines of the Korean community in Australia is rife.



He says, in many cases, workers were controlled from the minute they arrive in Australia.



“Agents are closely connected with the exploiters themselves, and everything is organised, right from the beginning. When people arrive at the airport there is somebody there to take them and put them in a van and take them to accommodation. It is accommodation, but it is like a slave camp.”



Seven or eight people in room ... Animals should not be kept like this, let alone people Joe Haln, Korean Workers Union

“They are put in a room, seven or eight people to a room, to sleep, and then they are woken up very early in the morning and driven to the building site, they don’t even know where they are, they don’t know who they are working for, and they are made to start working.”



“These are like forced labour camps, it is like slave labour, these people aren’t free at all.”



Haln said in some cases migrant workers have their passports are taken from them. They are not given employment contracts, and there is no agreement on conditions or rates of pay. The face exorbitant deductions from the money that they are paid for rent, food, or other expenses.



Others, particularly students studying in Australia, find jobs through the Korean local media, where jobs are advertised in Korean without any reference to award rates, or conditions. Some openly advertise pay rates as low as $12 an hour. The national minimum wage in Australia is $17.70 an hour.



Haln is now president of the nascent Korean Workers Union, which aims to protect Korean migrant workers from the systemic abuse he says has exploited, and continues to exploit, thousands, and to inform new workers of their rights.



He says workers are often kept in bleak conditions, crowded into already-overfull houses, especially in the Sydney suburbs of Strathfield and Lidcombe.



“The accommodation is very bad, very bad. Seven or eight people in room, they cannot stretch their legs. Animals should not be kept like this, let alone people.



“This is a cruelty, this is a brutality.”



Many of the Korean workers in Australia are employed on construction sites, building residential apartments or office blocks, or by cleaning companies who have contracts to clean city offices overnight. Others take jobs in restaurants across the city.



For many of those in construction, they work in jobs they are not properly trained for, and without protective equipment. Should they be injured, or seek to complain, they find themselves in a labyrinthine maze of contractors and subcontractors, an arcane chain to which there is no apparent end.



“There is no paperwork, no contract,” Haln said. “People don’t even know who they are working for, so they don’t know who to complain to. Nobody takes any responsibility.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Many Korean workers who find themselves trapped in exploitative jobs don’t know where to turn for advice – and are fearful of authorities because they may be in breach of their visa conditions. Photograph: imtmphoto/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Student visa-holders in Australia are restricted to working 40 hours a fortnight during term - but are often compelled by employers to work far beyond that quota, and often at massively depressed rates of pay.

Students find themselves compromised and, essentially, trapped: if they complain, or refuse to keep working, they are dismissed instantly, and they are unable to take their case to authorities because they know they are in breach of their visa conditions, and risk having their right to stay in Australia cancelled altogether.

“Sometimes the employer says, ‘I will report you to immigration and you will be deported.’ There is nothing these people can do. They are very afraid,” Haln said.

‘I had to work more shifts or be sacked’

Esther Kim (not her real name) came to Australia to study business. She knew little of Australia beyond a reputation for sunshine and open spaces. As a qualified chef, she quickly found work in a Sydney Korean restaurant to support herself through her studies.



Her student visa mandated she work no more than 40 hours a fortnight.



“But the boss told me I had to work more shifts, many more shifts than 20 hours a week, or they will sack me. And they said I will not be able to get any other job, they will tell other employers not to hire me, the say I won’t get a job anywhere.”



“I was being paid $15 an hour – [the award is, at a minimum, $23.64] – but I was under the threat to get sacked, I couldn’t complain to anyone. They knew I was working more than 20 hours a week, and they said, ‘We will report you to immigration and you will be deported.’”



We work like slaves, always ‘quick, quick, quick’. And we have no time to eat lunch, or dinner, or go to the toilet Esther Kim, chef

She said working conditions were oppressive: staff were shouted at and abused, told they were hopeless and constantly threatened they would be dismissed for “working too slowly”.



Kim told the Guardian she and other workers were abused regularly: “They said, ‘You fucking idiot’, ‘You whore,’ ‘You are stupid’”



She says restaurant staff were kept in a climate of fear. “We work like slaves, always ‘quick, quick, quick’. And we have no time to eat lunch, or dinner, or go to the toilet.

“We are always afraid, they like to keep us fearful. We are always very tired, very afraid.”



Kim says she stopped eating, lost significant amounts of weight, and couldn’t sleep for the stress. “I ended up crying, many, many times.

“I expected Australians to be respectful, respecting women and workers, but these are Korean people doing this, not Australians. They are exploiting other Koreans because they know they can, and there is no way we can complain.”

The myth of ‘the going rate’

Haln says Korean workers were particularly vulnerable to exploitation because of a number of factors, particularly:

Language – many Korean workers, when they arrive in Australia, don’t speak strong English and so would struggle to find work outside the Korean community. If they upset one employer in the close-knit Korean community they fear being blacklisted by all employees as troublemakers.

Cultural – there is not a culture of worker organisation in Korea. Unions in the Republic of Korea are seen as political, radical and anti-government, so few workers arrive in Australia with a history or connection with organised labour.

Naivety – many who arrive are unaware – and are kept unaware by the exploitative nature of their employment – of Australia’s legal protections for workers, award rates or conditions, and other legal employer obligations, such as safety equipment.



There are now in Australia at any time about 1 million people on temporary residence visas with rights to work – mainly working holiday makers, 457 visa holders, students and New Zealanders.

According to census figures, there are more than 75,000 Koreans living in Australia, more than half of those in Sydney. Fewer than 10% speak English at home.



The office of the fair work ombudsman says it has uncovered a string of cases involving exploitation of Korean workers over the past two years, dominated by “persistent underpayment” of workers.

Several migrant employers have told the ombudsman they undercut minimum wage rates because they paid agoing rate for overseas workers.

The ombudsman, Natalie James, says the so-called “going rate” for overseas workers of any nationality is a myth that must be dispelled.



James says it is illegal for employers to arbitrarily set and pay low, flat rates of pay, and that minimum wage rates apply to everyone in Australia – including visa holders – and are not negotiable.



Last year the operator of a Korean restaurant in Sydney told the fair work ombudsman he advertised for staff for as little as $12 an hour because he feared retribution from competitors if he offered the award rate.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest A joint investigation into underpayment of migrant workers in 7-Eleven stores by Four Corners and Fairfax Media in 2015 found the problem was systemic. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

The restaurateur told of pressure from the Korean business community to recruit workers at below-award wages and revealed that businesses which did not comply feared retribution.



Another Korean national who started a business in Australia relied on other business owners in the Korean community to set his pay rate.



“While I understand there are cultural challenges and vastly different laws in other parts of the world, it is important for business people operating here to understand and apply Australian laws,” James says.



In the wake of the 7-Eleven scandal – where franchisees were discovered to be paying as little as $5 an hour to workers – the minister for employment, Michaelia Cash, announced the establishment of a migrant workers taskforce, charged with weeding out and reforming worker exploitation in the Australian economy.



“A number of recent high-profile cases where vulnerable migrant workers have been underpaid and exploited at work have exposed unacceptable gaps in the system,” Cash said.



“While the government acknowledges that the majority of employers do the right thing by their employees, we will not tolerate exploitation in Australian workplaces.”



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The government has also increased fines for employers who exploit workers, as well as increasing funding for the office of the fair work ombudsman, and strengthening its powers.

The former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission head Prof Alan Fels, who has been appointed to chair the taskforce, says migrant workers are “highly exploitable” and vulnerable on a number of levels.

“They are willing to work for low pay, because that’s better than no work at all, their bargaining power is weak, and they generally have a lack of knowledge about Australian conditions and award rates.

“It’s also the case that they are generally not unionised, and there might be other ties, family ties, cultural ties, or an obligation around their visa, that means they are vulnerable to exploitation.”



He says the vast majority of exploited workers come from South Asia, China and Korea.

Fels’ taskforce – which will include representation from the departments of immigration, employment, education, as well as the tax office, attorney general’s office, the border force and the fair work ombudsman – has a broad remit to identify the systemic “weakness that create the conditions that allow exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers … and make improvements to stamp out exploitation”.



Dave Oliver, secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, says while any measures to reduce exploitation of foreign workers are welcome, the government’s measures are “too little, too late”.

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“Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and minister Cash have spent the past three years saying that there are no problems with our temporary skilled migration schemes.



“Unfortunately, the evidence available from our affiliated unions and other sources is that both Australian and overseas workers are being disadvantaged and migrant workers are exploited on a regular basis under the current policy and program settings that govern temporary work visas.”



Oliver says the taskforce membership should include representation from unions, non-governmental organisations and community groups “who help migrant workers on an everyday basis”.



“Since the new modern slavery and labour trafficking provisions came into force in 2013, the department of immigration has not prosecuted one employer. More vigorous safeguards need to be in place to protect the interests of overseas workers on temporary visas.”





