Backpackers are victims of wage theft, says study

BACKPACKERS and international students in Australia are being drastically underpaid and subjected to “endemic” exploitation, a study has found.

The study, based on a survey of 4,322 working visitors to Australia, found that about two thirds of holidaymakers received less than the minimum wage.

It said that the jobs least likely to be properly paid were waiters, kitchen hands, farm workers, fruit pickers and cleaners. It found 32 per cent of backpackers were paid less than A$12 (£6.90) an hour, compared with a minimum rate for casuals of about A$22 (£12.60).

“The study confirms that wage theft is endemic among international students, backpackers and other temporary migrants in Australia,” it says. “For a substantial number of temporary migrants, it is also severe.”

The study, by researchers at the University of New South Wales and the University of Technology Sydney for the Migrant Worker Justice Initiative, follows reports of slave-like treatment of temporary workers. A national inquiry last year found that some backpackers had been sexually harassed or were forced to do difficult physical labour in scorching temperatures without being paid properly, if at all.

More than 200,000 backpackers visit Australia each year on working holiday visas. Laurent Van Eesbeeck, a Belgian backpacker who worked on farms in Queensland, said some of the conditions he endured amounted to “modern slavery”.