Another interpreter's "strike"

Here are some explanatory notes on this news item, for readers both in and outside of Australia, who may not understand the jargon specific to Australian Industrial Relations.

I welcome any corrections to what I say here.

Firstly it would be a gross error to call this significant for “The industry”.

The “industry” is very poorly defined at the best of times, and it is most certainly not limited to a few hundred interpreters (that is translating speech and not text) who happen to work for just one of the agencies in Australia, largely limited to Victoria.

If “The industry” is to mean anything it should surely encompass everyone who takes professional responsibility for the removal of language barriers all over Australia, spoken, written and signed, in both the public and private sector, in any industry or setting, whether qualified or certified by NAATI or not. To big up one fractional group of disgrunts is a political strategy to win hearts, not minds.

The article mentions that they are “essential to communication in sectors such like healthcare, legal services, and education”. Yes. Interpreters are, but not those particular ones. This would fall under the heading “Things we didn’t think through”.

To say that they “work for” anyone, or indeed that they will “cease work” are also fictions. The insidious nature of Australian taxation and IR legislation mean that they may be labelled “casual” employees or “contractors” in order to pass the ATO’s 15 tests, but in effect there is no obligation for their “employer” to offer them a fixed amount of work per week, and the agency will have plenty of other compliant people who can do the work once these ones leave. They are effectively freelancers, who don’t want freedom.

For anyone outside of Australia the comments about this action being “risky” refers to the fact that since Federation in 1901 Australia IR law has evolved to become a self-serving, narrative-controlling, behemoth which seeks to pimp every worker and gate-keep every transaction and of course that includes being empowered to define exactly what constitutes a “strike”.

This one isn’t, for various reasons of course, but included is the fact that there have never been enough of them for any union to be prepared to sell them a “strike card”.

Like the natural entrepreneurs that are (but usually don’t realise) they also work for other “agencies”, and have or will develop other income streams so as to maximise their prosperity, and they are encouraged to do this by LanguageLoop and all agencies because that minimises the likelihood of them being found to have even more onerous obligations to them as “employees”, as happened to OnCall and ATL many years ago, or being left without resources when something like this happens.

In effect LanguageLoop is just another client in a market for their services and the interpreters are free to start refusing offers of work from that client, like I did about 20 years ago, as my income began to improve and alternative clients began to appear.

What’s really happening here is one of those regular convulsions that overtake the pool of young hopefuls when they realise that they have been systematically lied to by the government end users, the agencies, the RTOs and NAATI, where NAATI certification was held out as some kind of indicator of quality and passport to secure income. It isn’t.

Rather, this conga line of soulless bureaucracies continue to pump numbers of aspirant translators and interpreters into the market which is far in excess of demand, and who are entirely unequipped with the business skills necessary to obtain a return on their two year, $60,000 investment in a Masters Degree. People rarely notice that it is these factors that render all these people so vulnerable to economic exploitation.

The reality always comes as a shock, and when it does, people start doing something else for money (“leave the industry”), or stay the distance and learn how to make money as a translator. And it is bloody hard to make money as anything. If it wasn’t, everyone would be doing it.

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/104225350