Labour hire paid $4700 less a year

The number of labour hire workers now exceeds 600,000 nationally.

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - NewsWire Photos JANUARY 31, 2023: Australian Council of Trade Unions ACTU President Michele O'Neil attended a reception to celebrate the implementation of 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave with frontline workers in Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The number of labour hire workers now exceeds 600,000 nationally and they earn $4700 a year less than ordinary workers, new ACTU analysis designed to combat employer attacks on Labor’s proposed same job same pay laws has found.

Business groups are increasingly expressing their opposition to the proposed laws, which are designed to crack down on worker exploitation by labour hire firms and are a key plank of Labor’s second wave of industrial relations changes to be introduced later this year.

The ACTU research says big business is outsourcing labour at rapidly rising rates, with the practice rife in aviation, mining, manufacturing and transport, as well as hospitality, agriculture, meat processing, security and cleaning.

The peak union body says 3.5 to 4.5 per cent of the workforce, at least 600,000, are employed through labour hire, while Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show growth in labour hire use and labour hire employees is outpacing employment growth.

More than 80 per cent of labour hire workers do not have paid leave and most have no guaranteed minimum hours.

“They earn about $4700 a year less than ordinary workers when comparing the median hourly rate for a full-time worker,” the research finds. “Labour hire was originally intended to fill short-term gaps. But big business is now using complex, multi-tiered, opaque structures to outsource then ‘resource’ labour.

“This enables big business to erode job security and avoid the wages and conditions set in awards or enterprise agreements. It means a labour hire employee doing the same job alongside a direct hire can be paid much less.”

ACTU president Michele O’Neil said when two workers were working alongside each other and doing the same work, “but one is on a much lower rate of pay because their employer has been ‘clever’ enough to use a different company to employ one of them, this is not fair”.

BHP has clashed with the federal government and unions after the mining giant warned proposed same job, same pay laws would cost the company up to $1.3bn annually, and could cause labour hire demand to “drop off a cliff”.