Korean Job Discussion Forums

[GoldMember]

From the Weekend Australian

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24477296-7583,00.html

F you buy a Meriton apartment in the Tiffany building in Bondi Junction in Sydney's eastern suburbs, you get "harbour and ocean views ... heated swimming pools, spa, sauna, tennis court and two state-of-the-art gymnasiums", according to the advertisements. If you're training for a job cleaning the apartments, you may end up with 55c an hour.

Food writer Robert Carmac says his friend Phumat, an overseas student, was hired by Good Annie's Cleaning Service, the subcontractor cleaning the Tiffany apartments, and pocketed $10 after 18 hours work. Phumat was allegedly told he had earned $30 but that $20 had been taken out for his uniform, a T-shirt.

Carmac says they told Phumat that after the training he wouldn't be paid by the hour, but per apartment, receiving $16 an apartment, less than the award. He was also instructed to get his own Australian Business Number.

Had he done so he would have been at the bottom of a pyramid subcontracting chain, paying his own worker's compensation and superannuation out of his substandard wages. He decided not to take up the job.

Shocked by the situation, Carmac, who moved to Australia from the US 20 years ago, decided to do something about it and contacted Meriton. A spokesman for Meriton says that it investigated "and we compelled our contractor to immediately rectify the situation, which was done".

The cleaning subcontractor paid the student another $274. But Danny, a former supervisor for Good Annie's Cleaning Service, professes himself mystified by all the fuss, Carmac recalls. "He said to me, 'This is how we do it in Korea.' I said, 'You're not in Korea now."'

But it wasn't the first time Carmac had heard of such cases, involving other employers. "I had been hearing about this from Asian friends who got paid per job rather than per hour. One was being paid per massage but was required to stick around for four hours, even if he only did one massage. That meant he was earning $8 an hour. I tried to alert people to it," he says.

In a paper published this year, Monash University professor Chris Nyland writes that in many cases overseas students working in Australia are part of a highly vulnerable workforce "compelled to accept forms of employment and levels of employment that are unacceptable to domestic students".

Carmac believes no one wants to know. "My feeling was the government officials I talked to hadn't ever thought of anything I was telling them as something to do with the system. They spoke as if it was all to do with the individual case."

The NSW Office of Industrial Relations told him it couldn't do anything because Phumat had been told to get an Australian business number. Never mind that he never got it.

The matter did not provoke much interest from NSW Industrial Relations Minister John Hatzistergos either. On September 16, Carmac wrote "Dear Minister, I would like to report a subcontracting cleaning company in NSW that appears to be ripping off its workers.

"As an Australian, I am appalled to hear that foreign immigrants and students here are being cheated of fair and working wages. Please do not fob me off by saying that this is a federal issue."

It was to be more than three weeks before he was fobbed off. The minister's office swung into action, after being contacted by this newspaper, briskly reporting that their hands were tied. "As the company is a private company and the student is not a child, under the NSW Industrial Relations (Child Employment) Act 2006, NSW has no legal jurisdiction in this matter."

Meriton is vowing to get contractors to sign statutory declarations saying they're doing the right thing. Good Annie Cleaning Service is still the subcontractor for the Tiffany building and another Meriton property to this day. "But the situation is under close scrutiny," the spokesman says.

Good Annie's owner asked that questions go to his lawyer, Brandon Kong, who said he would have to get instructions from his client but didn't call back.


Yep, even when in OUR countries you still need to understand the special situation of Koreans.