New report finds serious flaws in ChAFTA

Australian Government authorities will be highly unlikely to detect exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers under its current plans for a free trade agreement with China due to serious flaws in the proposed agreement, according to a new report commissioned by the Electrical Trades Union (ETU).

The report ‘The Impact of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement on Australian job opportunities, wages and conditions’, from University of Adelaide Senior Law Lecturer Dr Joanna Howe, highlights how the agreement fails to ensure foreign workers will be protected.

Dr Howe has made 13 recommendations on how the problems with the ChAFTA can be remedied without needing to renegotiate the agreement with China. She said it is vital that labour market testing is enshrined in law and steps are taken to ensure market salary rates are paid to Chinese workers.

The report found there is nothing to stop an Australian employer from replacing Australian staff with temporary migrant workers from China for some categories of workers.

Dr Howe said enabling legislation must be enacted in order to ensure Chinese workers are not used as a way
 of undercutting local wages and conditions. 

“This can be achieved by making it a requirement that Chinese workers be paid the applicable market salary rate and not merely the award rate for their occupational category,” she said.

Howe has recommended a substantial increase in the enforcement capacity and powers of the Fair Work Ombudsman.

The ETU said the report underscored the need for changes to protect both foreign workers and Australian employees.

“The report shows that, in its current form, the ChAFTA has no requirement for a regulatory mechanism to prevent an employer from preferencing a Chinese worker over a local worker,” ETU National Secretary Allen Hicks said.

“Migrant workers will be very vulnerable to exploitation under the current ChAFTA and, as the report points out, they will be unlikely to blow the whistle about underpayment of wages or exploitative treatment because of the nature of the employer-sponsored visa agreement.”