Policy & Research

The Productivity Commission is undertaking an inquiry into Australia’s migration program and the use of charges to determine the intake of migrants.

Thank you for the invitation to Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) to make a submission on the annual update of advice to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection on the Skilled Occupations List (SOL) for 2016-17.

The CFMEU is Australia’s main trade union in construction, forestry and furnishing products, mining and energy production. We welcome the opportunity to submit to the 2016-17 SOL.

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Recent media exposés of the exploitation of working people in Victoria’s labour hire industry have highlighted the insufficiency of current regulation and its inability to provide protection for Victorian workers.

ChAFTA is the worst trade agreement that an Australian government has ever signed and attempted to impose on the Australian public.

With full regard to the evidence outlined in this submission the Senate Committee should conclude that:

The Australian construction industry accounts for a disproportionately high number of corporate insolvency events. The most recent ASIC statistics show that 22.8% of all companies entering into some form of external administration in the 2013-14 financial year came from the construction industry. This was the second highest of all the industry categories, behind the ‘Other (business and personal) services’ category.

Labour trafficking and forced labour are global problems that face all countries including Australia.

Organisations as diverse as the Australian Crime Commission and the ACTU have warned of an increase in trafficking in Australia. Slavery and trafficking have been the focus of a recent parliamentary inquiry.

These evil practices can be organised by international crime rings with the complicity of unscrupulous employers so the victims can be subject to serious coercion and danger. As a result most cases are hidden and go unreported.

SGS has undertaken an economic and social impact assessment on the effect that a proposed Fly-In-Fly- Out (FIFO) mining operation at the recently constructed Daunia and Caval Ridge mines will have on the town of Moranbah in central Queensland. The study reviews the demographic and economic profile of Moranbah and the wider Mackay region in which it sits, to determine whether there is scope to open the mining operations to the local working population.

What is ‘Sham Contracting’?

Sham contracting is a device that attempts to disguise an employment relationship as one of client and independent contractor. Successive inquiries and official figures show that sham contracting is a widespread problem across the Australian economy. This material also shows that the problem of sham contracting is largely concentrated in the construction industry.