This seems like a case of trying to cram the ruinous practices back into pandora's box, which has been leaking for a very long time. Transport companies have had a long time to optimise their extraction of value from cheap, easily exploitable employees from overseas.

The easily exploitable workers aren't available anymore, so the companies who exploited them will have to change their exploitation habits if they want to fill their positions from the remaining labour pool.

Of course a landed citizen isn't going to sign up to be treated unfairly if they don't have to, they're not as desperate and therefore not as exploitable. I imagine they're reading the terms of employment on these positions with disgust, and so they should.