Understanding Temporary Migrant Work in the Australian Food Services Sector

This article provides a critical summary of the case study on temporary migrant work in the Australian food services sector, highlighting the demand for migrant workers and the violation of their rights.

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The objective of this paper is to provide a critical summary of the article titled
“Unsavoury Employer Practices: Understanding Temporary Migrant Work in the Australian
Food Services Sector” which is written by Joo-Cheong Tham and Judy Fudge. This article
analysed the case study of Australian Food Services Sector in order to argue that the demand
for migrant workers has increased to do precarious, unsavoury jobs which other people did
not accept. The authors argued that the cost minimisation strategy of companies in Australian
food service sector and the demand for precarious work norms has resulted in increasing the
demand of employers who prefer to hire vulnerable workers who are ready to do those
precarious jobs (Tham and Fudge, 2018). The demand for migrant workers who are ready to
do unsavoury jobs is increasing in the country through dedicated low-skill/low-wage
temporary labour migration programs in which people come as international students and
working holiday schemes. However, this article did not analyse the actions taken by the
Australian Government towards recognition and protection of the rights of migrant workers
for whom the government is providing permanent residency scheme through a five-year
special visa agreement (Kainth, 2019).
The failure of the legal framework in Australia is highlighted by an example in the
article which provides that under an audit of 1066 employers in café found that a majority (58
percent) did not meet their obligations given under the Fair Work Act (Tham and Fudge,
2018). This example shows that small and medium businesses also play a major role in the
violation of migrant worker rights along with migrant labour programs. The article also
argued that cost-minimisation strategy also leads to very high labour turnover in Australian
food services sector which hinders the profitability of organisations that shows negative
implications of hiring migrant workers. It shows that although the number of migrant workers
is increasing in the sector; however, companies are still struggling to meet their labour
demands. The ‘3D’ explanation provided by the authors’ highlighted different reasons of the
growing number of migrant workers such as naturalising of processes and quality of jobs,
neglecting of employer labour-use practices, differentiation between the position of migrant
and local workers and sources of vulnerability of migrant workers (Tham and Fudge, 2018).
Conclusively, this article missed some factors; still, it did a good job in explaining the
situation of temporary migrant workers in Australian food services sector.

References
Kainth, S. (2019). English, skill requirements relaxed for Australian permanent residency in
these regions. Retrieved from
https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/punjabi/en/article/2018/01/07/english-skill-
requirements-relaxed-australian-permanent-residency-these-regions
Tham, J. C., & Fudge, J. (2019). Unsavoury Employer Practices: Understanding Temporary
Migrant Work in the Australian Food Services Sector. International Journal of
Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations, 35(1), 31-56.