Canberra body hire companies underpaid dozens of some of the Territory's most vulnerable workers hundreds of thousands of dollars in less than 12 months, a CFMEU Construction audit has found.
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CFMEU Construction ACT branch secretary, Dean Hall, told Fairfax the July/August audit, carried out by an independent firm, had unearthed one case where a single individual had been shortchanged about $10,000 over eight months or almost $300 a week.
He said that company's underpayments had totalled more than $100,000.
The union wants the ACT Government, which has built major projects such as the Canberra Women's and Children's Hospital and the Cotter Dam on the back of "body hire" labour, to introduce mandatory licensing for what is currently an unregulated industry.
Body hire companies have workers on call, not payroll, who can be hired out on an as-needed basis. Fairfax was told many are either young or from non-English speaking backgrounds and lack the experience or the literacy skills to understand or assert their rights.
Originally intended as a stopgap measure, body hire has become the preferred method of employment in the building and construction sector in the ACT, the CFMEU says.
Mr Hall said up to 500 Canberrans would be working on a body hire basis on any given day and that this could almost double if there were major projects, such as the dam, on the go.
Nathan Weir, a 35-year-old former footballer from Wagga who worked on the hospital job, has spent eight of the last 13 years as "body hire" site labour. He said it stank.
"It wasn't by choice; it's shit," he said. "But everything is body hire now. It is the only way you can get a start in construction."
Two of the six body hire companies contacted by Fairfax said they had passed the audit with "flying colours" while a third, Hays Specialist Recruitment, said "we always comply with all requirements regarding the pay and work conditions of our workers".
Emplace's Jason Croker rejected any suggestion the company had underpaid workers and said legal action would likely be taken against anybody who suggested otherwise.
"We are not perfect but on the odd occasion errors happen with the payment of wages … they are quickly rectified and adjusted accordingly," he said.
Fairfax was alerted to the audit by an employee at the firm where the largest underpayment is alleged to have occurred.
"Why do we have to put up with this in Canberra?" he said.
Mr Hall agreed, saying many Canberra construction workers lived by the "hungry phone call" and likening elements within the industry to "street pimps" and "human traffickers".
BNC's Tony Bleasdale, who said his company was given a clean bill of health in the audit, backed the CFMEU call for the ACT Government to introduce a licensing system.
Mr Hall, who said the body hire business model had been more enthusiastically embraced by Canberra construction firms than elsewhere, linked it to the local building industry's poor safety record.
"ACT employers are addicted to it and, as a result, our safety record is 30 per cent worse than the national average," he said.
Mr Bleasdale, the son of a Liverpool docker who came to Australia under the Big Brother movement, said there had been a major decline in industry standards in the last seven or eight years and that he had heard horror stories about some practices in Canberra.
"There are groups who are intent on not paying their workers the correct rate (under the EBA) and then not meeting their taxation obligations (by phoenixing the company)," he said.
A former union organiser and assistant secretary of the Building Workers Industrial Union from 1979 to 1984, Mr Bleasdale said it was obvious that underpayment of workers was happening in Canberra on a significant scale.
"I can go in (to a potential client) and put a set of numbers, which have been carefully calculated and reflect proper wage rates and entitlements (for the workers), on the table only to be told I am $10 an hour dearer than the next guy."
