Wages Theft Cases

The Government has a rescue plan.

Fair wages and conditions not necessarily included.

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Hmm, didn’t we do this back in the 19th century, with willing workers (mostly) imported to work the QLD cane fields. And when the scheme was stopped, the workers were all deported back to where they came from.
There is apparently no limit to the craziness of the National Party.

If you mean the South Sea Islanders. the kanakas, a great many stayed.

Two of my wife’s nephews are married to their descendants.

Debatable, as to how voluntary, once they had arrived. Assume your tongue was suitably engaged sideways?

In this more recent instance the deal appears to be to allow for more visitors, possibly from the UK to extend their stay if they work for at least 88 days for agriculture. They still need to pay their way to get here, a subtle difference to the previous English cheep agricultural labour force. Volunteering was not optional, while an extension of the sentence - oops stay, was subject to good behaviour.

The pay and conditions offered in 1788 are still available, according to some recent reports.

P.S.
Note that the UK still has run away Covid, and the alternative nearer South Pacific Nations have been largely overlooked for distribution of Covid vaccine.

The Fair Work Ombudsman is taking Woolworths to task for underpaying staff.

“That’s why I pick Woolies”?

An article regarding the alleged disgusting behaviour of United Petroleum.

Apparently just as bad as Retail Food Group.

Personally, I believe that our local United is making a killing on the pies as they sell loads of them. Every second fuel customer appears to buy one, and they are delicious.

After reading this article, I am thinking of changing to the new local Liberty for fuel but that may only hurt the hard working people that they employ.

I wonder if United is being run by grubs who formerly worked at Optus as they appear to have a similar modus operandi.

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An article regarding rubby, bottom-feeding businesses shafting their employees now JobKeeper has ended.

Who would have expected that to happen?

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Another call for fair payments.

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Hopefully some positive action to protect migrant farm workers.

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A well overdue change. But it does nothing to address the exploitation of workers with slave labour rates of pay through ‘piece work’. That would require a significant change to industrial relations laws and the relevent awards.

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Another case of the disgusting exploitation of workers’ entitlements.

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What an absolute shocker.

Another case of alleged disgusting behaviour in a food delivery business.

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What an absolute disgrace.

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This article highlights the need for all employees to regularly check their super fund transactions to confirm employer payments. This gives them the opportunity to speak with their employer and possibly the ATO sooner rather than later, to reduce any losses from employers not paying when they should. To facilitate regular checking, employees should ideally have online access to their super fund account.

Whilst fault in this case is clearly not with the employee, had he been aware of the associated insurance consequences he could have made a small personal contribution to keep to the insurance going.

The outcome of the reported case can be used as an additional bargaining tool when any employee discusses the non-payment of super with their employer.

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An issue not mentioned is with 3 months between deposits, if none were made insurance might already be cancelled by the time an employee would routinely check. One would hope they could resurrect it with their personal deposit but that is speculative and may or may not be possible, insurance and personal circumstances dependent.

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Why should the employee be the one to fork the money out. The employee should be able to receive the full benefit of their Super plan including insurance benefits and the employer be forced to cough up any costs involved in ensuring this occurs even if leads to bankrupting the employer. Another problem is that the ATO are only too well aware of if an employee still receives wages, they also follow up missed Super contributions but this normally only if a complaint is made or something else triggers a compliance check. Why isn’t a missed payment enough to

  1. contact the employee to advise them their employer has not made the needed payment. I’m sure every employee would be glad to receive the advice as they could then hound the employer and if a Union member be advising their Union of the non compliance and

  2. have the ATO bulldoggedly force the employer to comply with the Law.

I could only guess this is because the Govt really aren’t interested in Super for Employees but are more interested in helping their “mates” get ahead.

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Whilst the employee should not have to fork out, they may like to make a small contribution e.g. $10 to protect their own interest. Not ideal, but a lot simpler than having to engage you local ambulance chaser to get a reasonable financial outcome.

Your suggestion for the ATO to contact each individual if a super payment is not received is likely to reduce the amount of unpaid super. However it would be simpler and cheaper if every employee took interest in their own super rather than bearing the additional cost of the ATO having to change nappies every three months.

Given that no Government in the past 29 years has been able to solve this problem, it is probably a lot more complex than the current Government simply wanting to look after their mates.

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Unfortunately. I know of businesses that operated in Cairns some 20 odd years ago who failed to pay their employees’ super, and when they reported the businesses to the ATO, absolutely nothing happened.

One bottom-feeding grub told his employees that he was investing their contributions into the business premises he had bought for their future benefit., and when he sold the business they got zilch

The other charlatan who has gone bust several times went bust without paying the entitlements.

The ATO is about as much use as the ACCC unless you are an unfortunate who received a few JobKeeper or JobSeeker dollars in error.

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