Labour hire companies non-compliant in Victoria’s horticulture industries

Victoria’s horticulture regions have the worst rates for noncompliance in the country, with labour hire companies being issued the bulk of infringements.

Labour hire companies are troubling Victoria’s horticulture industry, with the state having the highest rates of non-compliance in the country, new figures reveal.

The Fair Work Ombudsman on Wednesday released the results of three years of investigations into horticulture compliance across 15 regional hotspots in Australia, and found that Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley region had the highest rate of overall noncompliance.

NSW’s Riverina, Victoria’s Sunraysia and Shepparton regions, and NSW’s Coffs Harbour and Grafton region were the next most in-breach areas; regional areas in Queensland were the most compliant.

“Our inspectors will return to these five troublespot regions with a focus on labour hire providers, who made up 80 per cent of non-compliant employers in these locations,” Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said.

The report found labour hire operators had notably higher breach rates than growers, from mostly a lack of record-keeping, cash-in-hand payments, and contracted workers not knowing who their employer is.

Of employers who failed to meet payslip and record-keeping obligations, 91 per cent of infringement notices went to labour hire providers.

100 per cent of the 23 labour hire providers investigated in the Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley where a determination on compliance was made were non-compliant.

Richard Shannon, NFF Horticulture Council executive officer.

NFF Horticulture Council executive officer Richard Shannon said that the high levels of non-compliance were “no surprise” and that the FWO report reinforces the need for a national labour hire licensing scheme.

“Queensland has the best rates of noncompliance, and it’s the jurisdiction with the best labour hire licensing scheme. That’s the model we’d prefer nationally,” he said.

“One of the qualities of the Queensland scheme is significant investment in monitoring and enforcement. You can write all the laws you want, but people might just ignore them (without enforcement)”.

As of May 20, there were 498 licensed providers supplying the state’s horticulture industry, and since 2019, Victoria’s Labour Hire Authority has refused 170 licence applications and cancelled 220 licences.

LHA investigations into the industry have resulted in over $2m in combined penalties across six separate cases dating back to December 2022, with another three cases before the courts currently.

“This report highlights the scale of unlawful conduct in horticulture and reinforces the importance of our expanded compliance and enforcement program in the industry,” a LHA spokesperson said.

Across FWO’s investigation, it visited over 360 farms and orchards, investigated 512 businesses, issued $760,405 in fines, and recovered $384,168 in wages for underpaid workers.