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 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.
The Fair Work Ombudsman concedes it has been drawn into unfamiliar territory by a spate of multi-million dollar underpayments by large corporations, telling a parliamentary inquiry that policing systemic payroll non-compliance at companies like Woolworths, Qantas and Wesfarmers "does not sit easily" with its historic role.
A court has ordered that the Fair Work Ombudsman refund company directors any restitution made to former employees if the regulator is unable to track them down within 28 days.
The ASU has hit out at the FWO for letting Qantas off with a $390,500 "slap on the wrist" contrition fine for underpaying 640 misclassified head office workers by about $7.1 million, but the airline says its self-reported error also led to about $22 million in overpayments.
Service station owners who required a visa-dependent employee to hand over his tax refund and cover the cost of drive-offs have been ordered to compensate the former console operator and his fellow-worker wife more than $50,000 after a court found them accessorily liable for underpayments.
