A damning report has found underpaid international students and backpackers are owed more than a billion dollars in stolen wages.
The Fair Work Ombudsman says it is reviewing the study, which says an overwhelming majority of victims are failing to take action to recover the money they're owed.
French backpacker Rodolphe Lafont ((ro-DOLF lah-FON)) has has spent a year in Australia on a working holiday visa, employed at a number of farms across the country.
He describes a fruit-picking job in Shepparton, Victoria, as the worst.
He was paid according to how much fruit he picked, rather than the hours he worked, and says he was often paid well below the minimum wage.
((LAFONT
"You work like 8 hours a day for only 50 dollars. It depends on your efficiency. I am fast but even if you are fast, if the tree is not full or it is not a good day, you don't have a lot of money."))
Hostel manager Peter Manziere [[man-ZEER]] says he hears horror stories like Mr Lafont's often from other backpackers.
((MANZIERE
"Everyone has a story. Someone pay them 5 dollars per hour, someone pay them per basket instead of per time. Probably 80 per cent have bad experience in the farms, yeah."))
A new report by two Sydney universities suggests those experiences point to a system that is broken.
Their study surveyed more than 4,300 international students and backpackers working across Australia.
More than half said they were underpaid, with one in three reporting they earned about half the legal minimum wage.
Report co-author ((ms)) Bassin Farbenblum estimates the underpayments are in excess of a billion dollars.
((FARENBLUM 1
"It's clear that Australia now has a large, silent underclass of hundreds of thousands of underpaid migrant workers."))
More than 90 per cent of those who experienced wage theft failed to report it to anyone.
