A Chinese Federation University student who was paid just $8 an hour by a central Ballarat business says nine out of 10 international students in her circle are illegally underpaid.
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Jenny* said she looked for work at a legal rate for four months before accepting a cash-in-hand job, earning less than $50 for six hours of work a week.
Another international student who was sexually assaulted on “almost every shift” was paid just $5 an hour as a fast food delivery driver.
Her story is “still haunts” Trades Hall Council secretary Brett Edgington, who tried to convince her to report her employer to the police.
Students are too “terrified” to report underpayment and often subject cultural and financial pressures to stay silent, Mr Edgington said.
The exploitation of international students has been in the spotlight this year after revelations of chronic underpayment at Caltex and 7-Eleven, often of international students.
“She (the female student) was afraid that her parents, which were working class in her home country, had worked very hard to save up for her to study, and the shame of not completing the course and disappointing her parents was the reason why she wouldn’t report what had happened to her,” he said.
International education contributed $5.8 billion to the Victorian economy in 2015.
For Jenny, working cash-in-hand was a last resort to try and cover her living expenses after repeated knock backs seeking legal work.
Most international students know they are being underpaid – some, like Jenny, earning less than half the minimum wage of $17.29 an hour – but felt they had “no choice”, she said.
“One of my friends, she’s from America but she still gets $11 per hour and she says she has no choice, she says ‘local people, some of them can’t get a legal job’,” she said.
“Ninety per cent of my friends, they have illegal jobs and they say ‘you just get an illegal job, it’s easier and you don’t need a CV’.
“Most of them, they realise it’s illegal, they still do it because they say ‘I have no choice, I need to cover my living fees, I need to rent a house’.”
Jenny now has a job which pays above minimum wage.
“The work environment is very different because I work with a lot of Aussies and I enjoy working with them, everyone is very nice to me and I don’t have a boss who insults me,” she said.
Federation University Director of Student Connect Jerry van Delft said the university had received “a very low number of complaints” from international students about underpayment and were proactive in educating students about their workplace rights.
*Not her real name.