Labor‘s visa crackdown for TPP unity

AN even tougher crackdown on foreign workers is promised by Labor if it wins office in a bid to pacify unions that are angry over its support of a controversial trade pact.

Despite some unions urging it to block the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement in the Senate this week, the Opposition is expected to back it.

News Corp Australia believes a fierce crackdown on abuse of student and holiday visas is top of the list, as well as a tough labour market testing regime.

Labor Leader Bill Shorten met senior union figures last week, including ACTU president Michele O’Neil, Transport Workers Union national secretary Tony Sheldon and National Union of Workers national secretary Tim Ken- nedy, in a bid to allay some of their concerns.

Victorian Trades Hall and several powerful unions had vowed to lobby senators into reversing the decision of the Labor caucus to back the plan.

The Opposition had been engaged in fierce internal debate over the regional freetrade agreement over fears it would erode labour standards by allowing the importation of workers from TPP nations in- cluding Canada, Peru, Mexico, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.

The Greens and the Centre Alliance will try to take advantage of division within Labor over the TPP — between free marketeers and unionists.

It comes as the National Young Labor Left wrote to senators saying the party’s proworker platform “could be undone by this TPP”.

“Turning back the tide of wealth inequality, returning to full employment, fighting wage theft and casualisation, abolishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission, restoring Medicare and welfare, stopping multinational tax evasion, protecting super, relieving our regions, the just transition to renewables: should Australia enter the TPP, all of this could be fatally undermined before Labor has even entered office,” the letter said.