The Australian Workers\u2019 Union says this week\u2019s wool industry appeal for Pacific Island workers to be used to fill a supposed worker shortfall is just another attempt to undercut pay and conditions using cheap imported labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wool industry claims to have identified a workforce shortage of 500 shearers and 500 shed hands, and wants to use Pacific Islands workers in what it hopes will be the start of a steady pipeline of easily exploitable workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AWU National Secretary Dan Walton said the union was not convinced there was a genuine worker shortage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDespite the ongoing claims by the Shearing Contractors Association of Australia and some woolgrowers of a labour shortage, the fact is the Australian flock has been shorn year after year,\u201d Mr Walton said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was successfully shorn right through the Covid pandemic, and it can be shorn now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Shearing Contractors Association and the same wool growers just don\u2019t want to pay the current market rate, which is 15% above award, simply because they have not been able to flood the market with cheap labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey should stop looking overseas and instead work to attract Aussie workers by offering fair pay and conditions, and proper training.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Walton said while the AWU had backed the Pacific Australian Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme\u2019s use as a safeguard against wage theft and worker exploitation in the horticulture industry, it had raised strong concerns to the Agriculture Department about its unsuitability for the wool industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And he said that far only one shearing contractor had applied to become an approved PALM scheme employer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe AWU will be closely looking at this approved employer\/contractor to ensure that they are properly training these workers and ensuring that any approved employer\/contractor meets their obligations regarding labour-market testing under the PALM scheme, and they haven\u2019t so far.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Australian Workers\u2019 Union says this week\u2019s wool industry appeal for Pacific Island workers to be used to fill a supposed worker shortfall is just another attempt to undercut pay and conditions using cheap imported labour. The wool industry claims to have identified a workforce shortage of 500 shearers and 500 shed hands, and wants … Continue reading “AWU condemns new wool industry push for cheap overseas labour\u00a0“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16618,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16617\/revisions\/16618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}