A catalogue of exploitation by employers has been detailed by overseas students at the Australian National University.
To pay their way through university, many take part time jobs in cleaning and restaurants.
They tell of a range of shady practices which result in them getting less than the legal minimum wage.
And the students from abroad said local employers treat them much worse than Australian students get treated.
According to the ANU's Postgraduate and Research Students' Association, the practices include:
- employers paying students legally, but then demanding some money back
- paying only $12 an hour in cash (the legal minimum is $19.49)
- not providing payslips
- no superannuation
- promising records of work to people seeking a visa in return for lower pay
- inadequate protective gear
More than 400 postgraduate students at the ANU gave details of their experiences in part-time work outside the university.
The results of the survey indicate that only half of the international students got payslips for the work they did - compared with 80 per cent of the Australian students.
More than half the students from abroad said they were not paid for all the work they did.
Only about half of them said they got the minimum wage or more. And only half said they got the right protective equipment when they worked in dangerous environments.
It impacts on your studies and on your mental health.
Anthropology student Utsav Gupta
Parth Sharma, for example, came from India to study robotics at the ANU. He said that when he arrived he took a cleaning job. His pay slip said he had worked five hours when he had actually worked ten hours.
He now works for McDonald's and sings the company's praises. "When I work for McDonald's, I'm getting paid. Amazingly, I get what I'm supposed to get, including superannuation."
The president of the ANU's Postgraduate and Research Students' Association, Utsav Gupta, said that he was offered cash-only jobs at rates of pay way below the legal minimum.
"It impacts on your studies and on your mental health," he said.
Many students who arrived fresh from abroad simply didn't know how Australian labour law operated. Some did not realise, for example, that they had a right to superannuation.
"We know that these things are happening, and we know that the incidences that we hear about are barely scratching the surface of what is going on," Mr Gupta said.
