ETC | More power to Fair Work & severe penalties to employers about wage/vis…

​The Coalition government's election promise to buttress the workplace watchdog in a comprehensive crackdown on wage fraud is important and welcome.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash, who announced the policy on Thursday, acknowledges exploitation of workers, many of them students and migrants, is widespread. Should the government be returned at the July 2 election, it has committed to a tenfold increase in fines and a $20 million funding increase for the Fair Work Ombudsman. The policy also includes the appointment of former head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Professor Allan Fels as the chief of a new Migrant Worker Taskforce within Fair Work.

The government's move comes after a joint investigation by Fairfax Media's Adele Ferguson and Sarah Danckert and the ABC's Four Corners revealed convenience store chain 7-Eleven has been systematically defrauding workers for as long as a decade. Last week, in a cynical bid to limit repayments to potentially as many as 20,000 current and former workers, the disgraced chain scrapped the independent panel investigating the exploitation. That panel was headed by Professor Fels, who described 7-Eleven's move to bring the investigation in-house as "bogus" and a "triumph" for dodgy franchisees.

Ms Cash says that in his proposed new role Professor Fels would again be involved in the 7-Eleven case, but we believe the situation could remain unsatisfactory, because the anonymity that is so fundamental to the defrauded workers' confidence in coming forward would be compromised unless the company relinquished any role in the process.

Other parts of the wider policy announcement include a ten-fold increase for the current maximum penalty handed out to employers who intentionally ripped off workers. Currently, employers would be fined $10,800 for individuals and $54,000 for a corporation.