Short-staffed restaurants want foreign workers to be given free or cheap flights to Australia as the hospitality industry calls on whoever wins the federal election to help reverse the tide of venues cutting back hours.
Restaurant and Catering Industry Association head Wes Lambert also joined other peak bodies calling for shelved workplace reforms allowing part-time staff to pick up more hours without attracting penalty rates to be revisited.
The hospitality industry wants subsidised flights for overseas workers to help fill labour gaps.Credit:Edwina Pickles
“We are working on a proposal for the next government to subsidise flights to fill empty seats,” Lambert told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “The expectation that industry has the available cash flow or the experience to advertise is short-sighted.”
Lambert said the idea had been floated with both the Coalition and Labor, with interest from both sides.
Comment was sought from both camps, with a Labor campaign spokesman saying the party was “pleased to see our borders reopen and working holidaymakers, skilled migrants, international students begin to return”. The Coalition did not comment.
Business leaders across industries and service sectors are calling for permanent skilled migration levels to be raised or entry thresholds lowered to combat labour shortages as workplaces battle to fill record-high job vacancies and the unemployment rate falls beneath 4 per cent.
Industry groups want workplace rules to be revised to allow part-time staff to work more hours without the business incurring overtime.Credit:Getty Images AsiaPac
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has acknowledged the need to import workers to keep businesses open, while Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the proportion of skilled visas would be lifted within the migration cap.
Australian Industry Group head Innes Willox said that when it came to migration, the first task for whoever wins government “must be to promote Australia internationally as a place that is again open for business and open for skills”.
Grattan Institute economist Brendan Coates said the number of working holidaymakers in Australia was down by 86 per cent since the beginning of the pandemic, and the number of international students was down 44 per cent.
“Hospitality are the largest employers of those groups in country … if you front up to your local café, you’re more likely to see a local, Australian student in that job than a backpacker,” Coates said.
Following Morrison’s commitment to revive parts of the Coalition’s shelved industrial relations omnibus bill, Lambert also called for the next government to pass a proposed provision that would allow part-time employees to accept more hours without bosses incurring overtime penalties.
He said the absence of such reforms could lead to the “erosion of service” at hospitality venues reducing their operating hours, with many already operating at greatly reduced capacity.
Australian Retailers Association chief executive Paul Zahra also backed reviving the legal changes: “Australia’s industrial relations system remains an untamed beast and the failure of the omnibus bill last year was a lost opportunity.”
However, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said Morrison’s election proposal would turn those part-time employees into casual workers “whose hours can be moved up and down at will”.
“At a time when the cost of living is skyrocketing and people just can’t keep up, the last thing we need is more casual workers and more cuts to workers’ pay,” McManus said.
Industrial Relations Minister Michaelia Cash denied any changes would be made to the “better off overall test” – which ensures workers on enterprise agreements are paid more than the award and no employees go backwards when renegotiating – following a Labor attack on the Coalition over wages.
However, Morrison said there would be no “major changes” to the test, and spoke only of a provision allowing pandemic-affected businesses to suspend the safeguard when repeating the denial during the leaders’ debate on Wednesday night.
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