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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 13 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 3803 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The researcher said she found it hard to find people who would talk to her, because they were afraid of losing their jobs. Outworkers were also investigated by the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission a few years ago. The commission established just how disturbing this industrial exploitation is.

Outworkers are right at the bottom of the supply chain and completely out of sight. Our current federal government adds to this by not classifying outworkers as employees, which means that they are not protected by awards, such as we have.

On the FairWear website are a series of personal stories. They illustrate the situation better than statistics. One woman says:

I live in St Johns Park, near Canley Vale, NSW. I came to Australia from Vietnam 2 years ago, and I've been an outworker since then.

In Vietnam, I worked as a designer and tailor, and I taught others how to sew. In Australia, the only work I've found is sewing clothes in my home. I work very long hours, starting early in the morning and finishing late at night.

In October, I sewed clothes with the Sussan label. I was given quite a difficult job sewing pants, which required a lot of skill and accuracy. My boss inspected my work to make sure all the measurements were just right. This was a requirement from Sussan that the work be accurate. If anything was incorrect, I had to do the whole item again. It took a long time to finish that order.

I was paid $2.10 for each pair of pants I sewed. Each pair of pants took around one and a half hours to complete. I kept a sample of those pants with the Sussan label and I still have them at home.

When I was doing my shopping recently, I went into a Sussan store and saw that the pants I sewed were selling for $50. I was shocked, and kept asking myself - why did I only get $2.10 when Sussan sells these pants for $50? How much profit do the middlemen and the retailers make from our work?

I stopped working for Sussan because I couldn't survive on these low rates of pay. I'm now 7 months pregnant and I have to think about how I will support my child. I can't look after my family unless I'm paid a proper amount. You can't raise a family working for Sussan.

I have chosen this story from among others because Sussan has at least in the past claimed that their existing clothing contracts require manufacturers to use legal labour sources, so they do not need to be part of the monetary system. Many outworkers have reported sewing clothes sporting the Sussan label for well below award rates of pay.

It is quite interesting to look at the history of the campaigns for fair conditions for outworkers. In 1994, there was a national outwork information campaign. Information in 12 languages was distributed to outworkers and employees, and a multilingual outwork phone-in was conducted over two months.

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