Some pay rates for fruit pickers too low, growers admit

Fresh produce growers admit some employers set pay rates too low but deny widespread exploitation of visa workers.

Fresh produce growers and suppliers have denied visa workers picking fruit are subject to widespread ­exploitation.

Fresh produce growers and suppliers have admitted that some employers are setting pay rates at “inappropriately low levels” but deny visa workers picking fruit are subject to widespread ­exploitation.

The Australian Fresh Produce Alliance is opposing an Australian Workers Union application to the Fair Work Commission that seeks to give pieceworkers on farms access to a minimum hourly pay rate.

Horticulture workers can be paid a piecework rate or an hourly rate. The piecework rate is based on the amount picked, packed or pruned, and an average competent pieceworker can earn 15 per cent above the award rate as compensation for not receiving a guaranteed hourly rate.

In a submission to the commission, the alliance says the 15 per cent “uplift” was a quid pro quo for no guaranteed hourly rate and should be removed if the AWU application succeeded.

The alliance says granting the union proposal would disadvantage competent pieceworkers who currently benefit from the 15 per cent uplift and also dis­advantage poorly performing employees as paying all workers a minimum hourly rate “regardless of performance will force employers to become much more strict in culling workers with low productivity”.

It says the decline of professional “picking gangs” means that much of the workforce is drawn from backpackers “with no prior experience and often poor motivation”.

A substantial minority of pickers start the job and leave in days while most leave within eight weeks. While picking is “not rocket science”, workers take several weeks to become competent,

The alliance says the benefit for employers in piecework arrangements is the labour cost of … employees with low productivity is kept commensurate with their productivity until they achieve basic competence.

“This allows employers not to be discerning in selecting and retaining their pickers and to continue engaging pickers found to have low productivity,” it says.

“It also means … more experienced employees are incentivised to maximise their productivity.”

A joint study by Unions NSW and the Migrant Workers Centre in Victoria found backpackers on grape and zucchini farms had been paid as little as $9 a day, and blueberry farm workers $10 a day.