'Not fair and quite sad': Cohort of workers being underpaid by billions

International student Mai was full of pride when she landed her first job in Australia. 

"At that time I was really happy because now I can live by myself, be more independent, not rely on my family and actually can afford the renting," the Australian National University student said. 

But she said her employer at a Canberra hospitality business began to call her day and night, asking her to work at short notice, for which she was paid a flat rate below the minimum wage, even on weekends. 

"Even sometimes when I saw my check-in and check-out sheet it was often rounded down, and I mean that's not fair and quite sad,"

Mai said.

"Everything was so hard to afford and even paying rent is now more difficult and you're actually working for a lot of hours but like your effort is not anywhere, it's not showing."

Mai, who has chosen that name to protect her identity, said she was "really afraid to speak up". 

"And I was scared that my parents would be worried for me. So I would stay by myself, try to go get through all of it by myself,"

she said.

Passports taken, no breaks, threats 

Associate Professor Bassina Farbenblum, who founded the Migrant Justice Institute, said the underpayment of temporary visa holders, such as in Mai's case, was often a clue that those businesses were committing other forms of exploitation.

She has co-authored a major study into migrant worker exploitation commissioned by the Commonwealth attorney-general's department, finding: 

"International students alone may be short-changed by around  $3.18 billion per year," the report said.

"Not by accident, and not by a few rogue employers."

Professor Farbenblum said they had found "that the more that people were underpaid, the more likely they experienced conditions like having their passport confiscated or being made to work very long hours with no breaks, often two weeks in a row".

"And in some cases threats of harm or violence," she said.

"One of the things we see, particularly for migrant workers, is a threat to report the worker to immigration if they speak up or if they do anything.

"They're really fearful of losing their visa and they need to pay for food and pay their rent."

How ABNs are used for exploitation

Associate Professor Farbenblum said one of the biggest insights from the report, which heard from close to 10,000 migrant workers in Australia, was that cash-in-hand was no longer the preferred strategy to underpay employees on temporary visas.

"So we used to see that the way of keeping migrant workers off-the-books was to pay in cash. We're still seeing one in four paid at least some of their wages in cash, but what we're seeing now is increasing use of ABNs," she said. 

"Then there's no record of these people as employees and their pay can't be compared against their entitlements under the Fair Work Act."

Workers can pursue exploitation claims

The Department of Home Affairs introduced a temporary visa in 2024 to allow people to remain in Australia for up to 12 months to pursue a workplace exploitation claim after their previous visa expired. 

The Commonwealth also has a Strengthening Reporting Protections Pilot which promises the Department of Home Affairs "will not cancel your visa if you have breached a work-related visa condition, and there is a link between that visa breach and workplace exploitation" that is reported.

But there are concerns very few temporary visa holders ever report workplace exploitation.

The ABC has asked the Department of Home Affairs what the uptake has been for its migrant worker protections but the department has not yet responded to the questions.  

Mai said she believed almost no one came forward.

"A lot of my friends around me, they also get underpaid ... because we are international students, we just want to have the income, so we accept the situation and just follow it,"