High-impact outcomes, and more licensed providers than ever – progress in 2023-24

7 November 2024
High-impact outcomes, and more licensed providers than ever – progress in 2023-24

The Labour Hire Authority (LHA) Annual Report 2023-24 showcases a range of high impact compliance and enforcement outcomes.

The report sets out how LHA has developed to record its most successful year since commencing operations in 2019, including:

  • more labour hire providers licensed than ever before, with 5,663 businesses holding a labour hire licence – including 1,240 new licences granted over the year
  • new regulatory treatments introduced, enabling a wider range of harms to be addressed
  • more legal actions finalised than in all previous years combined - including the highest total penalty for breaches of labour hire law in Australian history.

With more providers licensed than ever before, LHA’s compliance and enforcement focus continued to grow in 2023-24, tackling non-compliance such as illegal phoenix activity and the misuse of independent contracting arrangements.

LHA finalised 474 investigations in 2023-24. The year saw significant compliance outcomes achieved across a range of industries and regions, with hundreds of warnings and cancellations of licences issued for non-compliance.

In 2023-24, these included:

  • 138 licences cancelled by LHA
  • 364 licences cancelled at provider request
  • 60 licences granted with conditions
  • 112 licence applications refused.

Throughout the year, LHA officers completed 100 field activities, interviewing hosts, providers and workers.

Key issues identified through these activities included:

  • hosts engaging unlicensed providers
  • non-compliance with labour hire industry laws or other workplace laws (such as taxation and superannuation)
  • underpayment of workers.

In 2023-24, serious non-compliance was prosecuted through the Supreme Court of Victoria, where LHA took legal action against ten companies and nine individuals.

December 2023 saw the Supreme Court of Victoria issue the largest total penalty for breaches of labour hire law in Australian history at the time – a total of $617,916 – following a successful LHA prosecution.

Elsewhere in 2023-24, LHA investigations led to several major legal actions, including:

Enhanced focus on targeted industries

LHA has continued to strengthen its compliance and enforcement program in 2023-24, achieving significant outcomes across industries, occupations and regions.

The program focuses on high-risk industries and high-impact harms, leveraging data and intelligence to direct activities.

Targeted industries included meat and poultry processing, commercial cleaning, security and horticulture, with specific harms targeted across industry areas.

Meat and poultry processing compliance program

Following on from initial engagement with industry stakeholders, LHA conducted field inspections of meat and poultry processing premises to assess the level of compliance of labour hire providers with their obligations under the LHL Act.

These field inspections identified several alleged areas of non-compliance, including two unlicensed providers, and workers at one site subjected to serious threats from their employer. With the workers’ consent, LHA made enquiries which ultimately resulted in the supervisor’s employment being terminated.

LHA cancelled 27 labour hire licences in the meat and poultry industry in 2023-24, after uncovering non-compliance with legal obligations through our intelligence-led compliance program.

An LHA communication campaign targeting labour hire workers in the meat and poultry processing industries was developed during 2023-24, launching across digital, social media and press channels in July 2024.

Commercial cleaning compliance program

The commercial cleaning industry represents a significant proportion of current labour hire licences in Victoria – nearly 20% of all licensed labour hire businesses. In 2023-24, LHA invested resources to support new labour hire providers in the industry through a series of targeted compliance campaigns.

This included:

  • direct outreach to newly registered ABNs in the commercial cleaning industry to provide information and – where necessary – encourage them to apply for a licence
  • engaging large commercial cleaning supply chains to ensure that all parties were appropriately licensed
  • working with prequalification companies to include an obligation to check for a labour hire licence in their portals when engaging commercial cleaning businesses
  • engaging with broader industry stakeholders by attending the 2023 ISSA Expo and publishing a detailed article in INClean Magazine.

These activities resulted in a significant reduction in unlicensed providers in the commercial cleaning industry and a doubling in licence applications in the past two years, from 268 in 2021-22 to 548 in 2023-24.

Security compliance program

In 2023-24, businesses that provide security guards and crowd controllers to other businesses remained a strong focus. The security industry can often involve the provision of labour hire through complex supply chains – while this can be a lawful business model, it creates an inherent increased risk of non-compliance.

To address this risk, LHA published updated guidance on the minimum costs of complying with legal obligations in 2023-24, which outlines the minimum legal obligations owed by a provider, and the expected cost per hour per worker to meet those obligations.

This guidance helps industry participants to understand and comply with their legal obligations. It is also used as a risk assessment tool to identify providers and supply chains at risk of non-compliance with those obligations.

LHA imposed conditions on several providers in the security industry in 2023-24, to address the risk of non-compliance in their complex supply chains. These included:

  • transparency conditions, requiring providers to regularly report details about their subcontractors to LHA
  • responsibility conditions, requiring providers to assess whether the amount it proposes to pay any new subcontractors will reasonably allow them to comply with minimum legal obligations
  • conditions to identify and rectify suspected underpayment of workers.

In the security industry in 2023-24, LHA:

  • cancelled 136 labour hire licences
  • refused 16 applications
  • issued warnings to 70 providers.

Horticulture compliance program

LHA’s compliance activities continued to focus on the horticulture industry in 2023-24. Horticulture employs thousands of workers in Victoria through labour hire providers. Unfortunately, it is also an industry that has historically seen significant worker exploitation.

In 2023-24, LHA took enforcement action against a number of unlicensed labour hire providers in the horticulture industry and succeeded in its first prosecution of a host business in the industry.

LHA has also taken compliance action against businesses operating in the horticulture industry for non-compliance with the LHL Act, including by cancelling 90 licences and refusing 46 licence applications.

A communications campaign targeting horticulture workers took place in December 2023 and January 2024 to raise workers’ awareness of their rights and how to report unlawful treatment by labour hire businesses to “help protect your workmates.”

Read the full report

You can read the Labour Hire Authority Annual Report 2023-24 in full on the LHA website.

For more information on progress made in 2023-24, read LHA data snapshot – 2023-24 in numbers.