I've known for many years, and written about often, the extraordinary injustice of banks selling subcontractors' unpaid work and materials to help pay the bank's unpaid debt. This happens many times a day in Australia, and that the Federal Labor Government has not put an end to it is testimony to the influence of big business.
But I was not aware of the vulnerability of tradesmen to householders and other small clients who simply refuse to pay. As I explain in my column in The Herald today this new awareness came about after I learnt over a week or so that a bricklayer/paver working at my home refused to employ anyone. He'd been left paying wages too often, he told me, when he'd not been paid himself. On top of that, of course, he'd be stuck with the cost of the materials. Nor will he work for builders, because it is too great a gamble.
Later a mate who's a self-employed plumber told me debts could be a problem, and on Monday he walked away from a job after working for two hours because the client was boasting about not paying other tradesmen! He tells me that the most unreliable payers are teachers and especially young female teachers, miners and especially young open-cut miners, and restaurateurs.
I phoned a relative who cited chronic refusal to pay as a reason when he took his plumbing business from Newcastle to a country town a couple of decades ago. Pensioners, then, were a problem, he told me, too often disclosing at the end of the job that they didn't have the money to pay! The risk is not so great in the country, my relative said, because tradesmen in the smaller pool knew who hadn't paid and were reluctant to work for these people. Sometimes, he told me, people paid for the previous work only when they needed another job done, and his practice in that case was to accept the money, of course, then refuse to do the new job.
The consensus is that the courts offer little protection for tradesmen. It costs considerable time and money to get the non-payer there. Often the non-payer is skilled in obfuscation and delaying, and a typical tactic after reaching a pay-by-instalment plan is to pay just one instalment, requiring the tradesman to return to court.
I cannot understand how any Australian can reach an agreement with a tradesman, watch as the fellow fulfills his side of that agreement, claim and enjoy the results of that work, then refuse to pay. Can you? What's been your experience as a tradesman or subcontractor? Are you a non-payer?
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