Like most prospective international students from Punjab, Jasbir Singh* was starry-eyed about starting a new life in Australia.
The son of government civil servants, the 23-year-old was used to a relatively cushy life in India. He was told he would be able to divide time between studies and work and be able to earn enough to pay for his rent and food as well as the university fees.
A science graduate, Mr Singh encountered a starkly different reality when he arrived in Perth for a masters degree, with $1,000 in his pocket.
“Finding any job was difficult which made survival a challenge," he told SBS Punjabi.
"And, I couldn’t tell my family in India about what I was going through, because I just couldn’t put them through the pain I was going through.”
Mr Singh’s education agent had painted a rosy picture of student life in Australia - a picture he says that was grossly inaccurate.
“If he had not misled, I would have been better prepared to take the challenged head-on.”
Mr Singh says the desperation of finding any job makes international students like him vulnerable to exploitation.
“I did a graphic designing job for a movie promoter that took me 17 hours to complete and he paid me just $150. Normally, that job would have cost him nearly $1,500,” he said.
Mr Singh says he had several such experiences soon after arriving in Australia in February 2017, including when a restaurant owner first asked him to design its menu but later refused to pay.
“Once I worked for a landscaper who said he would pay $20 per hour but paid only $11.50 an hour for the backbreaking work I did.”
Mr Singh finally found a cleaning job after nearly three gruelling months of searching and started receiving lawful wages.
After completing the first semester, he decided to change his course to and pursue an IT masters degree in Adelaide.
“After I moved to the new place, I had to go through the same struggle once again. There were employers who offered $11 an hour, some even $6 to $7 cash in hand.”
Mr Singh says that because of his bad experiences, he had decided not to work for cash without proper paperwork which he says was very hard to find.
He then started working as a delivery driver for an app-based food delivery service during his university break.
“The work I found was very irregular and did not generate enough income to pay for the rent, food and my university fees. Because I’m allowed unlimited work during my uni break, I would driver long hours delivering food, some days more than 18 hours, and sleep in the car park and get up and start driving again,” Mr Singh said.
This helped him save money to pay for the tuition fees and other expenses during term time.
Source: Pixabay
Mr Singh is among a majority of international students who didn’t approach the Fair Work Ombudsman to recover their stolen wages. He says being new in the country, he couldn’t muster the courage to take on his employers.
“When the students have just arrived here, they have a lot of things to worry about and there’s no awareness about their legal rights if they are exploited. I would say, why can’t the university, during the very first semester, just let students know what they can do if they are exploited?” he asked.
“I was also worried that if I complain now, other employers might be wary of employing me.”
The authors of the Wage Theft In Silence report say the inability of students to recover their wages is leading to a culture of impunity for wage theft in Australia.
“It is rational for most migrant workers to stay silent. The effort and risks of taking action aren’t worth it, given the slim chance they’ll get their wages back,” said co-author Laurie Berg, a senior law lecturer at UTS.
“There is a culture of impunity for wage theft in Australia. Unscrupulous employers continue to exploit migrant workers because they know they won’t complain,” said Bassina Farbenblum, a law lecturer at UNSW.
The authors argue that Australia must urgently implement reforms to prevent wage theft if it is to remain the destination of choice for international students.
*Not his real name.
