$170,000 in fines handed to farms and labour hire companies
Farms and labour hire companies have been fined more than $170,000 for breaking workplace rules by the Fair Work Ombudsman. Find out why.
Fines handed out to dozens of agricultural employers for breaking workplace rules are unlikely to change illegal practices, a union has warned.
The Fair Work Ombudsman announced on Friday it had issued 64 fines for pay slip and record-keeping breaches to employers in the agriculture sector, amounting to a total of $176,028.
The regulator also uncovered 10 instances of wage underpayment.
Australian Workers Union secretary Dan Walton said the average fine per breach of $2750 was “a drop in the ocean for a lot of bigger operators”.
He called for changes to labour hire licencing rules and workers’ rights under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme.
The majority — 55 — of the infringement notices went to labour hire entities, and nine to growers.
Mr Walton said the number of fines indicated “clearly there is an issue with labour hire licensing”.
“A lot of farmers are dependent on labour hire operators providing the right amount of labour at the right time (but) this out of sight, out of mind mentality is not good enough. Farmers need to be responsible for the working arrangements they put in place,” he said.
He called for more requirements to be placed on operators who wanted to set up labour hire businesses.
A spokeswoman for the National Farmers Federation said it was “good to see the cop is on the beat”.
While having 64 notices issued was “far from a gold star”, the NFF spokeswoman said it was also “not deep-rooted, widespread wage theft or exploitation”.
The NFF backed calls for an effective national labour hire licensing scheme.
“While penalties are a useful deterrent, they are not the only, or even the best way, to lift compliance. We are calling for a more streamlined system and for mechanisms that drum out dodgy operators,” the spokeswoman said.
Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker said inspectors had consistently found higher levels of noncompliance in relation to labour hire companies, as opposed to growers who directly engage workers.
“It’s a red flag if workers can’t identify their employer and are paid cash-in-hand, without pay slips, by individuals seemingly unrelated to the apparent employing entity. This is prevalent in multi-level supply chains where we consistently find wrongdoing,” she said.
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