Farmers will no longer have to guarantee Pacific workers a minimum of 30 hours employment per week, after the federal government announced it would scrap the requirement.
Instead, growers will be able to offer 120 hours of work averaged over 4 weeks to workers employed under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM).
After months of lobbying, representatives from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations today met with peak industry groups to announce the rule change, which is due to come into effect on July 1.
The PALM scheme offers seasonal workers from the Pacific an opportunity to earn higher wages so they can support their families in their home countries.
Queensland Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association chief executive Rachel Chambers said the changes would make the PALM scheme more workable for growers.
“Four weeks is better than one week,” Ms Chambers said.
“We were very clear in saying that it was an unworkable scheme to guarantee 30 hours week-on-week without any sense of averaging.
“It’s probably the best we can hope for at the moment.”
Under the changes, employers would be required to pay workers for 120 hours — even if they did not work for all that time.
Ms Chambers explained that if a PALM worker had only worked 110 hours over the four weeks, the employer would still be required to pay the worker for the full 120 hours.
“If you don’t do that, you lose the ability to average,” she said.
While these changes were good news for the industries that utilise the PALM scheme, Ms Chamber said there were still a lot of unknowns.
“We’re asking questions like, ‘How is that documented?’, ‘What is the compliance around that?’,” she said.
“Those things still need to be unpacked.”
‘It’s common sense’
North Burnett packing shed manager Cris Bryant said his employer, Blue Cow Farms, which this year hired more than 20 PALM workers, was no longer going to utilise the scheme under the 30-hour week average.
But, with the new averaging time-frame, Mr Bryant said the scheme would become more manageable.
“It’s common sense,” Mr Bryant said.
“It’s such a big risk to bring these people over, and to have these rules where we had to pay them X amount every week regardless of work.
“But it’s working for us, we’re getting return workers … we’ll certainly go back full-steam ahead with the PALM scheme.
“It’s good for the workers, it’s good for the future of the scheme and certainly good particularly for small businesses.”
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