Spotlight On: Ben Schneiders

Joint winner of the 2021 June Andrews Award for Industrial Relations Reporting.

People working multiple casual or labour hire or gig jobs across different sites, because they have to, was a cause of the virus spreading both last year and even now.

The Covid-19 pandemic revealed how the socially disadvantaged and those in insecure work were disproportionately affected by the virus.

Through first-person accounts and data sets on mobility patterns recorded during the height of pandemic in Victoria last year, The Age reporters Ben Schneiders, Royce Millar and Liam Mannix revealed its impact on gig and casual workers across Melbourne.

“A powerful and innovative piece of journalism which seamlessly combined data analysis, human storytelling and good old fashioned news breaking techniques to illustrate the causes of the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Melbourne, and its devastating impact on the most disadvantaged communities, particularly those in insecure work,” the judges wrote in their comments.

“It prompted an outpouring of community goodwill and a direct change in government policy,” they added.

Nick Jarvis caught up with Ben Schneiders shortly after his award win.

You’ve taken out the Industrial Relations Award four times in the past five years! Congratulations. What’s the best thing about receiving the award this year for this particular set of stories?

I think it was really being able to capture some of the reality of the pandemic, particularly in Melbourne. The main story from this series was at the height of the second wave in Melbourne where up to 700 people a day were being infected. What it was able to describe or show through data and through individual stories was who was catching the virus and why.

It was people in the most disadvantaged parts of the city, especially in the west and the north of Melbourne, and in particular people who had no choice but to go to work. They were in the types of jobs that couldn’t be done from an office. They might’ve had several jobs. They might’ve been working in a meat works or in a factory or warehouse.

It was a well-received and read story at the time. I think it really resonated with people who had that sense that this was going on and people had been talking about insecure work, but this was able to quantify it or describe it.

How did the collaboration with Liam Mannix and Royce Millar come together?

Royce and I have worked together for the best part of 10 years on a range of projects. I’ve got a background in industrial relations reporting, so on those kinds of stories, I probably take more of a lead. But there’s other stories where Royce has a particular expertise, whether it’s around development or city or politics. We’ve had a working relationship for a long time, so we divide up parts of the story and do particular things.

Liam is a fantastic young science writer at The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald who’s been doing great work through the pandemic. After the first story was published, Liam got in touch about some work he’d been working on and people he’d been speaking to which dealt with how people were moving during the pandemic. It was related to the first piece, and it was a fresh bit of data from a variety of different sources that were able to tell that story.

Is this a story that’s still developing for you?

The issues around insecure work and inequality are still as apparent as they were when we were reporting the story the best part of a year ago. Those kinds of issues keep coming up. A recent small outbreak in Melbourne was due to a ban on aged care staff moving between venues had been quietly lifted at the end of last year.

People working multiple casual or labour hire or gig jobs across different sites, because they have to, was a cause of the virus spreading both last year and even now. The same pattern of issues has been replicated.

What have been some of the most significant impacts for you from the publication of these stories?

I’d like to think that it helped raise public awareness about those kinds of issues. It was one of the best read stories on The Age last year. You hope when a story resonates that it helps, if it’s describing something that’s real, it helps shift conversations or shift views to better reflect what’s going on here.

People who were able to do office work or were relatively well off were far less likely to catch the virus. So, it points to some sort of fundamental divide in our city and our society between people who’ve got more and people who’ve got less. It’s been great that my work is supported, The Age has supported the publication of this, and it’s been great to see that it’s resonated.

Over the course of your career, thinking back over the many stories you’ve done, are there any that stand out as ones that you’re particularly proud of?

Well, I think really for the last five or six years, I’ve done a lot of reporting about wage underpayment, or as it’s known now, wage theft. In particular I did a lot of work around hospitality and wage theft at well-known restaurants. And before that series was a number of big businesses in fast food and retail who were cutting agreements with the SDA union that undermined the minimum wage. And it left many hundreds of thousands of people underpaid of significant amounts of money.

A result of that reporting was that those arrangements got overhauled and people started to get paid the minimum award wage. That was a really satisfying two or three years of reporting. So, yeah, there’s a range of other things, I’ve done around abuses within religions and political corruption, but I think those stories on wage theft in the last five years have been most significant.

“I think the importance of well-researched public interest journalism with a basis in scientific literacy is really important because the risk of misinformation or the risks of bad reporting now are really high.”

Thinking of the impacts that coronavirus has had in the past year and on journalism, do you have a message at the moment about why it’s really important to support quality journalism right now?

I think the importance of well-researched public interest journalism with a basis in scientific literacy is really important because the risk of misinformation or the risks of bad reporting now are really high. If reporting leads to mis-described risk from a vaccine or overemphasizes risk from a virus, it causes panic among people. It’s deeply distressing.

This is a moment where the implications of what we do as journalists, probably haven’t been greater in decades because you can see in the way people are engaging with the news. There’s a huge amount of interest in what’s gone on during the pandemic and a high degree of reader engagement.

In Victoria, the level of interest in state politics probably hasn’t been matched for many decades. The role of journalists is to report fairly, and also with a sense that these are really serious, weighty issues and need to be reported on carefully.

“You can’t do it without people that you speak to who are happy to share their stories or take risks. That’s central to journalism, and there’s always a leap of faith or trust from them.”

Is there anyone that you would like to thank or give a shout out to in relation to these stories? Anything you’d like to add?

All the people that talked to me. I spoke to some people who worked as cleaners, and they can’t talk on a on the record basis because they’d lose their job or they’d lose their livelihood or they could even lose their visa.

You can’t do it without people that you speak to who are happy to share their stories or take risks. That’s central to journalism, and there’s always a leap of faith or trust from them because you’re talking to, quite often you’re talking to somebody who’s a near stranger.

It’s also great to have done this with a couple of excellent reporters in Royce and Liam and in particular, my long-term editor Michael Bachelard, who’s also always given a lot of support to the work that I’ve done.

Ben Schneiders is an investigative journalist at The Age with a focus on industrial relations, business and politics. He has written extensively on the underpayment of workers, political corruption and on the labour movement. Ben is a Walkley Award-winning journalist and has worked at The Age since 2006 in roles including senior writer and workplace editor.

Royce Millar is a Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist at The Age with a special interest in public policy and government decision-making.

Liam Mannix is the national science reporter for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He started his career in Adelaide at InDaily where he won two Young Walkley awards, and then received a cadetship at The Age in 2014. He moved into science reporting in 2017, winning the Eureka Prize for Science Reporting in 2019. In 2020 he won the Walkley Award for Best Feature Writing Short.