Tuesday, 16 November 2021

Hospitality and agriculture sectors

Mr HAYES (Southern Metropolitan) (13:01): This is now time to enact greater regulation for both hospitality and farm workers. Both these industries are suffering staff shortages, which may be due to their notoriously being known for bad pay, long and unregulated hours, unfair working conditions and reports of exploitation. Wage growth in both industries has been non-existent. Both industries have some of the lowest paid jobs in the labour market and rely on exploiting foreign workers. I strongly support minimum wages for farm workers rather than the per-piece rate they are receiving now, and I also support fairer and more attractive wages for hospitality staff to improve working conditions in this industry. For the first time in a long time, with staff being hard to come by, we are starting to see many employers offering fairer rates of pay, but it is a sorry state of affairs when students and other workers regard getting legal pay entitlements and claiming of their bare minimum rights as cause for celebration. The current labour crisis gives us an opportunity to reflect on what we can do today to make these industries more attractive to workers. I strongly encourage the government to regulate both these industries and encourage employers to create career pathways to attract local employment.