Unions have called for diplomatic immunity to be revoked for foreign officials who exploit or mistreat live-in housekeepers and domestic workers.
The secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Sally McManus, also wants the federal government to stop diplomats from recruiting new staff from abroad if they have previously committed “labour abuses”.
On Monday the ABC’s Four Corners revealed the plight of live-in housekeepers and other domestic workers recruited by diplomats living in Canberra.
The workers were allegedly vastly underpaid, made to work long hours, kept in cramped conditions, and were threatened and had their passports taken.
The Salvation Army Freedom Partnership, which supports vulnerable domestic workers, told Guardian Australia on Monday that victims face unparalleled barriers to seeking help.
Diplomatic immunity protects their employers and hinders investigations by law enforcement, while the workers are placed in a vulnerable position by virtue of their visa arrangements and the powerful positions of their employers in foreign governments.
The ACTU has now called for the federal government to intervene. The peak union body said the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade should stop approving further employment requests for diplomats who had perpetrated labour abuses.
It has also called for the government to invoke article 32 of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations and ask foreign governments to waive diplomatic immunity for their officials, should they be found to be exploiting labour.
Article 32 states that: “The immunity from jurisdiction of diplomatic agents and of persons enjoying immunity under article 37 may be waived by the sending state.”
McManus said no one who subjects their workers to “what amounts to slavery” should be beyond the law.
“There should be no exceptions,” McManus said. “To have our own government departments approving the hiring of people who are later subjected to such appalling treatment is sickening.
“We should be ensuring that diplomats who’ve already abused workers are accountable for their actions and cannot employ further domestic workers.
The Salvation Army Freedom Partnership said it received an average of three referrals a year to help diplomatic domestic workers.
Heather Moore, the partnership’s national policy coordinator, said many of the cases it handled were horrific.
“From not being fed, not being given private living quarters,” Moore told Guardian Australia late last year. “We’ve had a client who had to sleep in a storeroom.”
The partnership has lobbied Dfat to create a direct link between support organisations and domestic workers. Such an arrangement would help create an outreach service and an anonymised, safe avenue through which to complain.
“If Dfat is the only place for them to get assistance, many of them will not do that, because they will not see Dfat as being independent from their employer,” Moore said.
United Voice ACT, a union representing cleaners and domestic workers, has helped diplomatic workers in the past. The ACT branch secretary, Lyndal Ryan, said she had seen cases of exploitation in the diplomatic community for 17 years.
Ryan supported the ACTU’s call for the revocation of diplomatic immunity for perpetrators.
She said the government needed to end arrangements that tied the domestic workers’ visas to their occupation.
“People need to know that the visa tied to employment is always problematic, because if you raise an issue then you run the risk of being deported,” Ryan told Guardian Australia.
“That’s used, and often talked up by the employer to extraordinary levels where they say things like, ‘we’ll report you to police, the police will deport you’.”
Ryan said domestic workers needed to be better integrated into their surrounding community.
“Even if you are not being exploited, being completely cut off from the rest of the community is not a good thing,” she said.
