Two franchisee directors of a Chatime bubble tea store have had most of their underpayment penalties suspended after a court accepted they acted on their franchisor's advice that they could pay age-based flat rates.
IR Minister Christian Porter has told the High Court that a Federal Court bench "erred" when it concluded that labour hire company Workpac could not rely on a legislative provision to offset loadings paid to the worker at the centre of a landmark case on casual leave entitlements.
Australia's largest independent grocery retailer in defending a $20 million class action has admitted to breaching leave loading requirements, but otherwise denied it should have paid salaried employees for extra hours or recorded their additional time.
A judge who took exception to a business being liquidated during an underpayment case was entitled to impose heavier penalties on the owners than sought by the FWO, an appeal court has found.
The FWC has ordered an aged care provider to restore leave days to employees it directed to stay away from work over COVID-19 transmission fears, observing "it's just the right thing to do".
Macquarie Bank's HR department designed a defective pay system that a competent IR lawyer would have quickly identified, the Federal Circuit Court has held in fining the bank $330,000 on top of $1.3 million in compensation owing to wealth advisors.
The AWU is seeking to delete a decade-old pieceworker provision in the horticulture award that it claims leaves affected workers with no safety net and substandard rates of pay.
The underpayment of migrant workers significantly worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a large Unions NSW audit revealing 88% of a sample of foreign language job ads in the state offered below award wages.
A new McKell Institute report recommends that the Morrison Government implement a national labour-hire licensing scheme, remove entry barriers to enable inspections by unions and redesign the visa system to curb widespread exploitation and wage theft in fruit-picking.
