As reported earlier this week; a program in the Northern Territory has seen prisoners sign on as labourers in a salt mine – now union officials say the prisoners and local workers are being stitched-up by award rates.

The Territory government has been running the ‘Sentenced to a Job’ program to allow prisoners to work on sites such as a potash project near Curtain Springs, which has struggled to find workers among the free population.

Matthew Gardiner from the United Voice union says concerns have been raised by miners: “We've had some miners in those different areas we represent coming forward, and they're a bit worried because of these large mining companies who actually quite happily use undercutting of labour and undercutting of wages to try and maximise their profits while driving down the different areas,” he said.Prisoners with low security classifications are being provided to public and private projects as a form of cheap labour. At the Curtain Springs salt mine they are paid award wages, 5 per cent of which goes to a victims' assistance fund and another $125 a week is for prisoners to pay their own board costs in jail.

“Currently the award rate for the area is around $16 an hour, whereas someone who works off the award rate would be working about $35 an hour... if anyone's working in this sector, regardless of where they come from or what they've done, they should be paid at market rate. This is the fair rate that's been done between employers and employees over a long period of time... no one in the mining sector works on award rate.”