The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme is a temporary migration program that allows Australian businesses to hire temporary workers from certain Pacific island countries. [1] The scheme is a type of guest worker program, with participants able to work in seasonal jobs of up to 9 months or in longer-term jobs of between 1 and 4 years. [1] Launched as the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme in 2008, workers were initially employed in agriculture, but the scheme has since expanded to other industries including meat processing and aged care. [2] [3]
As of August 2024, over 30,000 workers were employed through the scheme, with about 90% employed in agriculture and meat processing. [4] The Australian government has described the scheme as a "triple win" that addresses labour shortages in Australia, provides well-paid employment to workers, and provides skill development and remittances to developing Pacific island nations. [5] [6] [7] But the scheme has been criticised for facilitating exploitative practices. In a 2024 report, the New South Wales Anti-Slavery Commissioner highlighted poor working conditions and practices of modern slavery facilitated by the scheme. [8] The scheme has also been criticised for facilitating brain drain from Pacific island nations [9] and for providing limited benefits to workers. [10] [4]
The predecessor of the PALM scheme began in 2008 as a pilot program to bring in unskilled and low-skilled migrants from Pacific island countries to work in agriculture. [4] The pilot program initially had low take-up, attributed to a lack of awareness among employers and a lack of demand for labour due to an existing supply of backpackers and widespread illegal employment in the sector, [11] [12] but was assessed largely positively in a final evaluation report. [13] In December 2011, the government announced its intention to launch a full-fledged version of the scheme, the Seasonal Worker Program (SWP). The SWP was similar to the pilot scheme in most respects, but three new sectors - aquaculture, cotton and cane - were added, and the cap on the number of workers was expanded to 12,000 over a four year period. [11]
In 2018, the Australian government launched the Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS), which allowed for longer-term employment than the seasonal agricultural work permitted under the SWP. In April 2022, the SWP and PLS were consolidated into the uncapped, demand-driven PALM scheme. [7] The scheme has been progressively expanded into new sectors beyond agriculture. [3] The number of PALM workers in Australia grew significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many other populations of temporary workers were barred from entry to the country. [14] The number of participants grew from about 6,000 in 2019 to about 30,000 in 2024. [2]
Workers from 10 countries are eligible for the PALM scheme - Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. As of August 2024, there were 30,805 PALM scheme workers in Australia, one third of which were living in Queensland. 52% work in farming, 39% work in meat processing and 6% work in accommodation and care. [15] PALM scheme workers make up 10% of Australia's agricultural workforce and 23% of its meat-packing workforce. [10] Many Pacific islanders are able to earn far more in Australia through participation in the PALM scheme than they would be able to earn in their home countries, and often send remittances home to their families. [16] [2] Long-term workers earned an average of $40,836 in 2020 and saved or remitted 39% of their income. [17] PALM scheme workers sent home a total of $184 million between 2018 and 2022, while Australian employers earned $289 million in direct profit from PALM workers. [2] Some Pacific island countries are highly reliant on these remittances; in 2022, Samoa ranked second in the world for remittances as a percentage of GDP at 33%. [5] Participation in the scheme fell by 24% between July 2023 and July 2024, in large part due to the return of other temporary workers, particularly backpackers, after the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses had become more reliant on PALM scheme workers during the pandemic as they were among the only groups of temporary workers who remained in Australia in large numbers. [14] In 2024, concerns began to be raised that PALM workers had begun taking advantage of a backlog in asylum applications by lodging unfounded asylum applications that would allow them to live and work in Australia for several years on bridging visas until their applications were decided. In the 2023-2024 financial year, asylum applications from the approximately 30,000 PALM workers in Australia reached 244 per month, a rate of almost 3000 per year. [14] Professor Stephen Howes of the Development Policy Centre has labelled these applications "bogus", pointing out that all PALM countries except PNG have asylum rejection rates of close to 100% and that most asylum applications from PALM workers will ultimately be rejected. [18] [19] |
|
One of the primary criticisms of the PALM scheme has been the inability for workers to change employers. Workers in the PALM scheme are typically tied to a single sponsoring employer with very limited ability to switch employers and are generally unable to bring their families with them. [2] Many have argued that this inability to change employers enables exploitation and makes it more difficult for workers to speak up about wage theft and poor working conditions. [20] [15] [21] [8] Concerns regarding worker exploitation have been present since the earliest days of the scheme, with the Australian Institute of Criminology undertaking research into the potential for worker exploitation in the pilot scheme in 2011. [22] Several employers have been investigated or fined for underpaying and exploiting PALM scheme workers. [23] [24] [25]
Workers under the PALM scheme often have less access to government programs and benefits than residents. The Australia Institute has published research showing that PALM workers are often taxed at a higher rate than residents and have limited access to their superannuation. [26] Some workers have been overcharged by their employers for services like accommodation and transport, and often have deductions made from their pay to cover the cost of their flights to Australia. [27] [4] Most PALM workers do not have access to Medicare and must take out private health insurance. [10] [4] Workers also face high remittance costs. [28] Together, these costs limit the portion of workers' income that is ultimately saved or remitted.
Others have raised concerns that the scheme primarily benefits Australian businesses and that the benefits to Pacific island nations and workers are exaggerated. PALM workers in Australia make up 9% of the Tongan working age population, 5% of the working age population of Vanuatu, and 3.4% of the working age population of Samoa. This has led some Pacific leaders to express concerns about brain drain and the effects of the PALM scheme on their domestic economies. [10] [9] [5] Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu have all commenced reviews of their participation in offshore labour mobility schemes as a result of these concerns. [9] Between 2018 and 2022, workers sent home $184 million, but paid $280 million in tax, rent, and day-to-day expenditures while in Australia. [2]
Some have also criticised the scheme for the rate of worker deaths and injuries. 29 participants died in the 2022-23 financial year and 233 critical incidents involving injuries to PALM scheme workers were recorded between 2020 and 2023. Between 2021 and 2023, between 10 and 14 participants died in boating and car accidents, 17 died due to medical conditions, and the cause of 17 additional deaths remained under investigation as of December 2023. [29] In August 2024, representatives of the Fijian government announced plans to visit Australia to investigate working conditions after a Fijian woman died of a brain tumour while working at an Australian abattoir, with some alleging that workers had faced restrictions around sick leave and accessing healthcare. [30]
Foreign workers or guest workers are people who work in a country other than one of which they are a citizen. Some foreign workers use a guest worker program in a country with more preferred job prospects than in their home country. Guest workers are often either sent or invited to work outside their home country or have acquired a job before leaving their home country, whereas migrant workers often leave their home country without a specific job in prospect.
Blackbirding is the coercion and/or deception of people or kidnapping to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in countries distant from their native land. The practice took place on a large scale with the taking of people indigenous to the numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean during the 19th and 20th centuries. These blackbirded people were called Kanakas or South Sea Islanders. They were taken from places such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago amongst others.
In Canada, temporary residency applies to those who are not Canadian citizens but are legally in Canada for a temporary purpose, including international students, foreign workers, and tourists.
The Australian continent was first settled when ancestors of Indigenous Australians arrived via the islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and New Guinea over 50,000 years ago.
The Australian labour movement began in the early 19th century and since the late 19th century has included industrial and political wings. Trade unions in Australia may be organised on the basis of craft unionism, general unionism, or industrial unionism. Almost all unions in Australia are affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), many of which have undergone a significant process of amalgamations, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The leadership and membership of unions hold and have at other times held a wide range of political views, including socialist, democratic and right-wing views.
A migrant worker is a person who migrates within a home country or outside it to pursue work. Migrant workers usually do not have an intention to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work.
Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) is a term often used to refer to Filipino migrant workers, people with Filipino citizenship who reside in another country for a limited period of employment. The number of these workers was roughly 1.77 million between April and September 2020. Of these, female workers comprised a larger portion, making up 59.6 percent, or 1.06 million. However, this number declined to 405.62 thousand between 2019 and 2020.
Migrant domestic workers are any persons "moving to another country or region to better their material or social conditions and improve the prospect for themselves or their family," engaged in a work relationship performing "in or for a household or households."
A seasonal industry is activity within an economic sector in which the majority of operations take place during only part of the year, usually within a period of half a year or less.
Circular migration or repeat migration is the temporary and usually repetitive movement of a migrant worker between home and host areas, typically for the purpose of employment. It represents an established pattern of population mobility, whether cross-country or rural-urban. There are several benefits associated with this migration pattern, including gains in financial capital, human capital, and social capital. There are also costs associated with circular migration, such as brain drain, poor working conditions, forced labor, and the inability to transfer acquired skills to home economies. Socially, there are strong connections to gender, health outcomes, development, poverty, and global immigration policy.
Tanya Pouwhare is a New Zealand former radio and television personality. Currently she is a New Zealand business executive who has been recognised for her leadership and strong advocacy for sustainable ethical labor practices in NZ.
Human trafficking in Australia is illegal under Divisions 270 and 271 of the Criminal Code (Cth). In September 2005, Australia ratified the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, which supplemented the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Amendments to the Criminal Code were made in 2005 to implement the Protocol.
Foreign relations exist between Australia and Tonga. Tonga has a High Commission in Canberra, and Australia has a High Commission in Nukuʻalofa.
The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program is a Government of Canada program that was introduced by the Pearson government in 1966 between Canada and Jamaica but has since expanded to include Mexico and numerous other Caribbean countries. It is intended to allow Canadian farm employers to hire workers from Mexico and the Caribbean on temporary visas during the planting and harvesting seasons when employers are unable to hire local workers to fulfill their labour demands.
In 2009, Papua New Guinea was a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced prostitution and forced labor. Women and children were subjected to commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary domestic servitude; trafficked men were forced to provide labor in logging and mining camps. Children, especially young girls from tribal areas, were most vulnerable to being pushed into commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor by members of their immediate family or tribe. Families traditionally sold girls into forced marriages to settle their debts, leaving them vulnerable to involuntary domestic servitude, and tribal leaders trade the exploitative labor and service of girls and women for guns and political advantage. Young girls sold into marriage were often forced into domestic servitude for the husband's extended family. In more urban areas, some children from poorer families were prostituted by their parents or sold to brothels. Migrant women and teenage girls from Malaysia, Thailand, China, and the Philippines were subjected to forced prostitution, and men from China were transported to the country for forced labor.
The kafala system is a system that exists in many Arab countries in the Middle East, including most of the nations on the Arabian Peninsula, which involves binding migrant workers to a specific employer throughout the period of their residence in a country. The same system existed in Israel under the label "binding labour", until that country's supreme court eliminated it in 2006.
The Development Policy Centre (Devpol) is an aid and development policy think tank based at the Crawford School of Public Policy in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Devpol undertakes independent research and promotes practical initiatives to improve the effectiveness of Australian aid, to support the development of Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands region, and to contribute to better global development policy.
Migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates describe the foreign workers who have moved to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for work. As a result of the proximity of the UAE to South Asia and a better economy and job opportunities, most of the migrant foreign workers are from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Philippines and Pakistan.
Lebanon has gone through many stages in its absorption of migrant workers, both before and after the Lebanese Civil War. This development has led to multiple problems regarding integration in Lebanese society. The ambiguity of the Kafala system in Lebanon has resulted in migrant domestic workers facing many legal issues and violations to their basic human rights. The government has largely been inactive and ineffective in implementing laws to protect migrant domestic workers but has attempted to manage the situation but to little avail.
Migrant workers in the Gulf Cooperation Council region involves the prevalence of migrant workers in the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Together, these six countries form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), established in 1981. The GCC cooperates on issues related to economy and politics, and the subject of migrant workers constitutes a substantial part of the council's collaboration. All of the GCC countries are dependent on migrant labor to bolster and stimulate economic growth and development, as the GCC countries possess an abundance of capital while the domestic labor capacity is low. Although migrant workers in the Persian Gulf region amount to no more than 10% of all migrants worldwide, they constitute a significant part of the populations of their host countries.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: location (link)