Further to our communication released to our customers on 5 February in relation to a Senate inquiry into Job Security which led to the publication of an entirely false and misleading newspaper article, the Company requested to present evidence in order to correct the record and did so at a hearing held yesterday, 10 March. This was a public hearing and the full transcript will be available online at Public Hearings – Parliament of Australia (aph.gov.au). The facts from this hearing are as follows: 1. One of two disaffected Samoan workers appearing at the Senate claimed he only received $100 net for working a 60+ hour week. This is factually incorrect. 2. The official records show that in that week he only worked 19.75 hours, as there was only 3 of the 7 days that the farm had fruit to pick. 3. It is also worth noting that the timesheet which was supplied by the union was filled out by the worker and was not an official record. 4. Of the hundreds of workers picking fruit on that week no other worker has claimed to have worked the 4 days of closure. 5. We believe the fabricated timesheet is an attempt to mislead the Senate Hearing and the relevant news articles are ignoring the facts by trying to zone in on a specific week and present it as the state of norm. 6.For the 12 weeks that the worker worked on our farms, he averaged 32.65 hours. 7. His average gross pay of $962.73 per week over the 12-week period is in accordance with the Horticulture Award. 8. His average net take home pay after deductions incurred was $439.56 per week. 9. In the Senate hearing, the approved employer MADEC confirmed that the average net pay was 20% higher over the 12-week period than had been indicated in their Offer of Employment in Samoa.
