Australia’s trucking industry is in crisis and on the brink of collapse due to rampant illegal employment practices, often involving immigrants on student visas, insiders have warned.
Last year 739 road freight transport companies went bust across Australia – one in 14 – including Wagga Wagga-based Ron Crouch Transport, which went into voluntary administration in December before being rescued last week by Sydney firm Freight Specialists.
Owner Geoff Crouch said at the time that “sham contracting” – where companies hire truck drivers on individual ABNs, even though they don’t own and operate their own vehicle, in order to avoid paying employee entitlements – had devastated the industry, and spoke out again about the practice this week.
“It’s been the elephant in the corner of the room, but I think in the last 12 months or so that elephant has started destroying the room,” he told 10 News.
“Sham contracting is going to destroy this industry unless at some stage the federal government pulls its head out of its arse and does something about it.
“Everyone in the industry knows who the companies are. Do an audit of those companies, and if they’ve got 400 trucks on their books but only 50 truck drivers on their books, audit them, that’s how they’ll find out, it’s not rocket science.”
Other industry leaders agreed that sham contracting and the use of employee drivers, including foreign workers on student visas, was crippling legitimate operators, the Daily Mail reported.
True Ross-Sawrey, business manager at Port Kembla-based Ross Transport, said she was worried about the future of the industry due to sham contracting, which she said was “one of the main reasons for rate-cutting”.
“Bosses are advertising jobs saying truck drivers must have an ABN. Workers themselves are putting their hands up looking for consistent ABN work, the more hours the better, and the companies engaging them are winning more jobs,” she said.
“Everybody knows it’s illegal.”
And late last year the National Road Freight Transport Association (NatRoad) called on the federal government to crack down on the practice, saying it was compromising road safety.
“There is systemic manipulation in the road freight transport industry happening right now, not being detected by government agencies,” NatRoad CEO Warren Clark said.
“By allowing widespread illegal activity to flourish unchecked, we’ve created a system where lawbreakers prosper while legitimate businesses are punished for doing the right thing.
“Multiple transport operators report being approached by drivers demanding ABN payment arrangements, openly admitting ‘this is how other transport companies operate’.”
The outcry comes amid an ongoing driver shortage, with some leaving the industry due to unsafe driving conditions they blame on unqualified foreign drivers, while others are calling for licencing reforms to keep immigrants with insufficient driving experience off the roads.
Last year industry insiders highlighted growing concerns about overseas drivers, mainly from India, causing chaos on Australian roads, while hundreds of Indian drivers had their licences revoked in New Zealand amid a crackdown on false or altered documentation used during overseas permit conversions.
Header image: A Ron Crouch truck (Facebook).
The post ‘Sham contracting’ destroying Australia’s trucking industry, insiders warn first appeared on The Noticer.
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