26 October 2006 Guest workers sacked after refusing AWA’s that cut pay Four guest workers, employed in Australia on controversial 457 visas, have been sacked and face deportation for refusing to sign individual contracts that cut their pay, according to the building union. The workers were employed as crane operators and metal fabricators alongside six other guest workers for a subsidiary of western Sydney based manufacturer Southern Cross Rigging & Constructions. Each worker was required to pay $10,000 just to get the job, paid their own airfares to Australia, and then spent $100 a week in rent to live on bunk beds in two crowded rooms above the factory. The workers, with little knowledge of Australian law, contacted the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union for help following advice from local members of the Indian community. CFMEU NSW Secretary Andrew Ferguson said this was a case of an employer using new work laws to bring overseas workers into Australia and pay them at lower rates than local workers. “This is a clear case of unscrupulous employers using the Howard Government’s guest worker scheme and radical workplace laws in tandem to import cheap foreign labour rather than employing Australian workers with appropriate pay rates and conditions,” he said. “Three weeks after arriving here these workers were handed AWA’s, told the Immigration Department required them to sign, and those who refused were then sacked and evicted from their accommodation. “The failure of the Howard Government to act on the abuse of 457 visas by employers demonstrates that the government is complicit in this systematic abuse of overseas workers. The workers were hired by Southern Cross managing director Mark Merhi after responding to a newspaper advertisement in a Singapore newspaper seeking metal fabricators and crane drivers. Rajan Kandasamy, one of the sacked workers, believes they have been terribly exploited. “I gave up a job in Singapore to come here,” he said. “They told me it would be a good job, with good money and that we would live in very good accommodation and have food provided. “I feel I was tricked, because after I paid thousands of dollars to come here for this work I was told I must sign the new agreement, but I knew there was something wrong with it. “Now we have no job, nowhere to live, and only four weeks to find a new job or the Immigration Department will deport us from Australia.” Media contact: Tim Vollmer (CFMEU Media Officer) 0404 273 313