IT giant IBM has backpaid about 1650 workers more than $12.3 million after it failed to provide award entitlements to workers it regarded as "salaried professionals", while it faces a "contrition payment" of at least $676,000 under an enforceable undertaking with the workplace watchdog.
The Melbourne Magistrates Court has fined the organiser of a fashion event for failing to obtain work permits for more than 100 children aged 18 months to 14 years.
A federal court judge has in fining an underpaying juice shop operator almost $35,000 flatly rejected "cultur[al] differences" as a mitigating factor, lamenting instead the frequency with which ethnically diverse employers exploit their own communities.
In a significant decision on FWO investigative powers under recent laws stiffening protections for vulnerable workers, the Federal Court has rejected a franchisor's bid to have declared void a notice to produce documents created before the legislation came into force.
The FWO has confirmed it is now investigating three universities after the University of Sydney became the latest to reveal multimillion-dollar underpayments, while the NTEU blames mass casualisation for creating the conditions for "wage theft".
In levelling a $22,440 penalty against the former owner-operator of a labour-hire company that underpaid 80 workers on a Queensland mushroom farm more than $78,000, a court has noted the FWO did not seek compensation.
In a coronavirus-driven strategy shift, the Fair Work Ombudsman will temporarily consider the "impact on viability" when deciding whether to prosecute employers, but has stressed it will still require underpayments to be made good.
In the FWO's first "contrition payment" extracted from another federal public body, the ABC has agreed to pay $600,000 and enter into an enforceable undertaking after admitting it underpaid 1900 past and current employees more than $12 million.
The MBAV this year applied to revoke a 30-year-old exemption that enabled it to conduct its own elections, after an inquiry by the ROC into the conduct of the employer body's 2018 ballot.
The Federal Court has given the FWO permission to pursue a case that "raises matters of public importance with implications well beyond the parties" that involves a company, now in voluntary liquidation, that allegedly obstructed the watchdog's inspectors.