Employers face ten years in prison and maximum fines of $8 million or up to three times the stolen sum if it exceeds the cap, under new criminal sanctions in the Albanese Government's "Closing Loopholes" legislation, to be introduced into Federal Parliament tomorrow.
The Albanese Government's legislation to empower the FWC to set minimum standards for "employee-like" gig economy workers will apply only to work performed through digital labour platforms, Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke will reveal in a speech to the National Press Club tomorrow.
The FSU says Commonwealth Bank retail workers forced to work through their 10-minute tea breaks for the past six years will be compensated, after it won a $3 million settlement of its $45 million Federal Court claim.
Large corporates and universities accounted for almost two-thirds of the $509 million in unpaid wages and entitlements recovered by the FWO in 2022-23 on behalf of more than 250,000 workers, the workplace watchdog revealed today.
A FWO bid to piggyback a compliance notice breach case with underpayment orders has been upended by a court, which observed that merging the two pathways would "undermine" the Fair Work Act's integrity.
The FWO is prosecuting franchisor Bakers Delight for failing to prevent its franchisees from underpaying workers, after the head office discovered the wage theft and failed to address it.
The SDA has hit a major hurdle in its efforts to expand upon an underpayments court victory, the FWC refusing to order Aldi to provide six years of rosters, pay records and timesheets for almost 13,000 employees the union claims might have been shortchanged for work performed outside their shifts.
A court has limited to about $100,000 the fines it has imposed on an underpaying, now-shuttered labour hire company after accepting that it unintentionally broke the law and that its embarrassed founder is "appropriately remorseful".
A court has ordered a juice bar that pocketed a worker's JobKeeper payments to cough up nearly $30,000 and its director $5000 for ignoring a FWO compliance notice, signalling to the restaurant and cafe sector that its lawbreaking record has created a need for "very substantial general deterrence".
