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".
Woolies class action back before court in September; FWC rebuffs CFMMEU bid to stop BHP labour hire deployment; and Reinstatement for worker accused of "racially divisive" statements.
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.
Qantas has launched a Federal Court case against the FAAA to clarify whether it can keep paying fortnightly penalty rates in arrears while receiving JobKeeper, as the ASU accuses it of "stealing" by counting them against the wrong top-up period.
The Queensland Labor government has introduced legislation to criminalise wage theft and to establish a small claims process in the State courts which has conciliation as a first step.
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.
Merivale has hit back at a class action's claims it underpaid thousands of salaried employees and others engaged under a pre-Fair Work "zombie" deal and is maintaining it can use overpayments to offset additional entitlements.
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.
Three payroll officers who "reverse-engineered" false records during an FWO investigation have been fined a total of $121,000 as part of the largest penalty order won by the workplace watchdog.
Coles says a class action seeking to recoup more than $150 million allegedly owed to salaried managers is without merit, given it is already on track to finalise its review and start re-paying affected employees.