Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bunjelung Calkotin woman from Gadigl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Ann, Welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday,
Speaker 2: the second of November.
Speaker 3: I'm Sam, I'm Emma Gillespie. I'm the deputy editor here
Speaker 3: at the Daily OS.
Speaker 2: Nice to have you on m It feels like almost
Speaker 2: every few weeks that a different underpayment story hits the headlines.
Speaker 2: This week, a lawsuit was launched against supermarket chain Aldi
Speaker 2: for allegedly underpaying workers up to one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: million dollars. There's even the story this week about an
Speaker 2: underpayment issue in the Federal Department of Employment and Workplace
Speaker 2: Relations and they're the body responsible for ensuring payment conditions
Speaker 2: are met in the public service. In today's deep dive,
Speaker 2: Emma will sit down with the new Fair Work omitsman
Speaker 2: and a booth and she's the person charged with monitoring,
Speaker 2: investigating and enforcing Australia's workplace laws. And they're going to
Speaker 2: discuss why under payments happen from small businesses but all
Speaker 2: the way through to multinational giants. We're going to get
Speaker 2: to that interview in just a second, but first, Emma,
Speaker 2: what is making her lines this morning?
Speaker 3: A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces has defended a
Speaker 3: decision to strike the Jibalia refugee camp in Gaza, where
Speaker 3: the spokesperson said a senior Hamas commander and dozens of
Speaker 3: Hamas forces were hiding. The Hamas run Gaz and Health
Speaker 3: Ministry says at least fifty people were killed in the
Speaker 3: strike and that the total death toll in Gaza is
Speaker 3: over eight thousand, five hundred. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State
Speaker 3: Anthony Blinkoln will return to the region tomorrow to continue negotiations.
Speaker 2: Australia's High Court has ruled that convicted terrorist Abdul na
Speaker 2: Sir Ben Rica's citizenship should be restored. In a decision
Speaker 2: handed down yesterday, six of the High Court's seven judges
Speaker 2: ruled the Australian government was unable to strip Benbricker of
Speaker 2: his citizenship. A move taken by then Home Affairs Minister
Speaker 2: Peter Duddon. In twenty twenty PM Anthony Abernezi said his
Speaker 2: government will consider the implications of the decision.
Speaker 3: The International Monetary Fund says national inflation is still too
Speaker 3: high and has recommended the Reserve Bank continue to lift
Speaker 3: interest rates in Australia as well as introduce further government
Speaker 3: measures to limit inflation. The RBA will meet next Tuesday
Speaker 3: for its monthly cash rate meeting, with experts tipping a
Speaker 3: rate rise to a twelve year high of four point
Speaker 3: three five percent. Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the independent
Speaker 3: IMF report supports the government's strategy.
Speaker 2: And today's good news. A recycling scheme offering a ten
Speaker 2: cent refund for recycled drink containers has launched in Victoria.
Speaker 2: Most aluminium, glass, plastic and liquid drink containers can be
Speaker 2: returned to reverse vending machines and over the counter sites
Speaker 2: under this new system, which is hoped to cut the
Speaker 2: amount of LISSA in the States down by half.
Speaker 3: If it feels like you're seeing underpayment stories in the
Speaker 3: news every other week at the moment, you're not wrong.
Speaker 3: The fair work onmbardsman says that in the last year
Speaker 3: they found more than five hundred million dollars worth of underpayments.
Speaker 3: The Fair Work Onbardsmen helps Australians with things like advice, assistants,
Speaker 3: guidance for employers and employees to help us understand workplace laws.
Speaker 3: Anna Booth is the Fair Work Onbardsman and I'm throwing
Speaker 3: her on the deep end today. Anna has been in
Speaker 3: the role as Ombardsman at Fair Work for nine weeks,
Speaker 3: but she was willing to take on all of our questions.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the podcast. Let's start off with the role
Speaker 3: of the Fair Work Ombardsman. It sounds very serious. What
Speaker 3: is it that you do and how do you know
Speaker 3: that you're doing a good job?
Speaker 4: Oh that's two questions. So the Fairwork Combardsman is a
Speaker 4: person myself and also an organization with a thousand people,
Speaker 4: and we're the workplace regulator and we're responsible for making
Speaker 4: sure that people get the terms and conditions that they're
Speaker 4: entitled to in Australian workplaces, whether that comes from a
Speaker 4: statute like the Fair Work Act, or whether it comes
Speaker 4: from an award like the Hospitality Award, or whether it
Speaker 4: comes from an enterprise agreement. We measure our success based
Speaker 4: on the number of people who we give assistance to
Speaker 4: and the amount of money we recover. But really our
Speaker 4: purpose is to create harmonious, cooperative, and productive and compliant workplaces,
Speaker 4: and honestly, it's a little hard to to know whether
Speaker 4: we have created that in any one year, but we
Speaker 4: hope that what we do goes towards creating workplaces where
Speaker 4: people are kind to one another.
Speaker 3: We've seen underpayment stories in the news for years now,
Speaker 3: but as recently as this week, why do these stories
Speaker 3: keep appearing in our news cycle? Why does this keep happening?
Speaker 4: That's a very big question, one of the big drivers.
Speaker 4: I guess on two sides, So you've got an employer
Speaker 4: with obligations to provide terms and conditions, and the one
Speaker 4: that we're most used to hearing about is pay. And
Speaker 4: then you've got employees who are entitled to receive those
Speaker 4: terms and conditions, and if you like, you know that's
Speaker 4: the essence of the work wage bargain. On the worker side,
Speaker 4: there are lots of workers who are quite vulnerable. Young
Speaker 4: workers are particularly vulnerable, particularly young workers who are either
Speaker 4: still studying or coming into their first job, and that's
Speaker 4: because they may not know what their rights are, or
Speaker 4: they might be afraid to speak up even if they
Speaker 4: do know what their rights are and they feel they're
Speaker 4: not getting them. On the employer's side, there are lots
Speaker 4: of different drivers for underpayment. Sometimes it's just a mistake
Speaker 4: that's happened within payroll. Sometimes it's because they don't have
Speaker 4: the proper payroll systems that capture all the work that
Speaker 4: people do and the correct pay that they should be
Speaker 4: being paid. And sometimes it's because they are deliberately underpaying
Speaker 4: so that they can either earn more profit or they
Speaker 4: can stay in business.
Speaker 3: You've said before that it's directors and CEOs that should
Speaker 3: ultimately be the ones responsible for breaches when these companies
Speaker 3: are found to have underpaid their stuff. What does that
Speaker 3: responsibility look like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I mean that's the fundamental emma that you know,
Speaker 4: if you set up a business, even if it's a
Speaker 4: tiny little business, you have a lot of inputs, and
Speaker 4: one of those inputs is people. You've got to responsibility
Speaker 4: to know what the right rate of pay in terms
Speaker 4: and conditions are for your employee or employees, and then
Speaker 4: have the administrative systems, whether they're automatic or whether they're manual.
Speaker 4: You still just have to have the routines to make
Speaker 4: sure that when someone comes to work, you pay them,
Speaker 4: and you pay them correctly.
Speaker 3: In the last financial year, your team uncovered over five
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars worth of unpaid wages. That sounds like
Speaker 3: a lot of money. Is that a figure that is
Speaker 3: particularly bad worse than previous years? Where are we at
Speaker 3: in terms of progress on this issue?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So what's really interesting is I've only been in
Speaker 4: this job. This is the kind of the middle of
Speaker 4: my ninth week on the job, and I didn't realize
Speaker 4: that the last two years, where we have recovered a
Speaker 4: billion dollars each year half a billion for workers, that
Speaker 4: that was more in the last two years than in
Speaker 4: the previous twelve years put together. And it seems like
Speaker 4: the big contributor to that is very large companies discovering
Speaker 4: that they're not paying people correctly. And that's surprising because
Speaker 4: those companies do have the capital and the reserves to
Speaker 4: invest properly in systems, but apparently some of them haven't been.
Speaker 3: I know it hasn't been very long into the new gig,
Speaker 3: a couple of months, but with your background in fair
Speaker 3: work and given what you've seen in the last nine weeks.
Speaker 3: Are you confident that fair Work is catching all of
Speaker 3: the breaches?
Speaker 4: I am actually not confident that we are seeing everything
Speaker 4: there is to see. That's for sure. We are recovering
Speaker 4: a lot, but I think there probably is more to recover.
Speaker 4: And of course our prize is compliance that companies are
Speaker 4: putting the systems in place that they can find out
Speaker 4: if there are any mistakes being made. One of the
Speaker 4: biggest investments that the Farewell comferenceman makes is in education
Speaker 4: and advice. We enter into enforceable undertakings with large companies.
Speaker 4: We put a lot of public money into verifying exactly
Speaker 4: what the underpayment has been in that particular entity, and
Speaker 4: quite often we find out that there's actually more money
Speaker 4: that needs to be paid back than the company has identified.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of different aspects to it, but
Speaker 4: the real prize is in people not making mistakes.
Speaker 3: The Employment Minister Tony Burke has suggested himself that most
Speaker 3: underpayments are a mistake by employers. Do you agree with that?
Speaker 4: A piece of work done by an academic called Stephen
Speaker 4: Kliborn at the University of Sydney, where he interviewed a
Speaker 4: large number of employers that particular piece of work found
Speaker 4: of the employers interviewed that most of them were aware
Speaker 4: they were under paying. But he might have also been
Speaker 4: interviewing a particular cohort in a particular sector. So I
Speaker 4: don't want to contradict my minister. But equally I don't
Speaker 4: want to make something up. I don't know. I can
Speaker 4: only tell you what's Stephen clever and found in his research.
Speaker 4: But in the future, if the recent legislation becomes law,
Speaker 4: we will have to find a way of forming a
Speaker 4: view about whether there's intent. Obviously, in the future we
Speaker 4: will be actually able to say what proportion of prosecutions
Speaker 4: on the basis of the acts that were intentional.
Speaker 3: You've touched on sort of the federal government proposing to
Speaker 3: make wage theft a criminal offense. What are your thoughts
Speaker 3: on introducing some harsher, more tangible penalties for the companies
Speaker 3: and the directors responsible for underpayment. Are we talking a
Speaker 3: slap on the risk a fine? Should they face jail time?
Speaker 4: Well, look, the Fairwork Combradceman has welcomed the increased penalties
Speaker 4: and that obviously that's a full range of penalties and
Speaker 4: in an extreme case, of criminal liability could include jail.
Speaker 4: We've welcomed it because not that we want to see
Speaker 4: necessarily people punished for punishment's sake, but we really want
Speaker 4: to see, as we discussed earlier in the interview, the
Speaker 4: landscape change. We want voluntary compliance. We want employers to
Speaker 4: be paying attention and being very careful and paying their
Speaker 4: people correctly. And the evidence does suggest that high fines
Speaker 4: are at a terrence. What has to go with that,
Speaker 4: and i'll quote the academic Stephen Cliborn again, is to
Speaker 4: have awareness and expectation in the workplace community that there
Speaker 4: will be enforcement of those laws. If people think that
Speaker 4: they won't be caught, it wouldn't really matter how high
Speaker 4: the fine was, it won't make any difference. So it's
Speaker 4: putting the two together that are important. But certainly those
Speaker 4: things first. The increase in penalties is welcome.
Speaker 3: And we're seeing particular industries with higher rates of underpayment
Speaker 3: claims than others, you know, the university sect and retail, supermarkets, cafes, restaurants.
Speaker 3: These are the sectors that seem to come up in
Speaker 3: the news a lot. Why do you think that some
Speaker 3: sectors struggle with this more than others.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's different situations or different circumstances facing these different sectors.
Speaker 4: So you've mentioned universities. There is a very high proportion
Speaker 4: of casual academic staff teaching students in our universities, much
Speaker 4: more than you'd think, and it seems to have crept
Speaker 4: up on us. And at the same time, universities have
Speaker 4: let local managers take charge of the employment and payment
Speaker 4: arrangements for those casuals and that has led to a
Speaker 4: high degree inconsistency and often quite serious contraventions in restaurants
Speaker 4: and cafes. The different kind of drivers, they're often small business,
Speaker 4: they are often economically challenged, they're the very high turnover
Speaker 4: of those businesses, low barriers entry, and so those things
Speaker 4: all contribute. They lay the groundwork really for underpayments to occur.
Speaker 3: What about young people? Are they particularly vulnerable to underpayment issues?
Speaker 4: They really are. Our definition of young workers is fifteen
Speaker 4: to twenty four. We had five thousand anonymous calls from
Speaker 4: young workers last year and that's thirty four percent of
Speaker 4: all our anonymous reports, so they're quite prone to report anonymously.
Speaker 4: We found that thirty percent of those young workers were
Speaker 4: employed in the accommodation and food services sector, another eleven
Speaker 4: percent in construction, and they are another eleven percent in retail.
Speaker 4: And those young workers, if it is their first job,
Speaker 4: they are often uncertain of their rights. They're often afraid
Speaker 4: to speak up because they do want to keep their job.
Speaker 4: We also want to make it clear that it is
Speaker 4: an offense to treat anyone unfairly or adversely just because
Speaker 4: they ask about their rights. My own son has had
Speaker 4: that experience on a building site many years ago when
Speaker 4: he opened his phone to find out what his order
Speaker 4: rate should be, and he happened to open the cfmu's
Speaker 4: website because he found that to be a useful place
Speaker 4: to find out information, and he was ordered off the site. So,
Speaker 4: you know, young workers can be particularly vulnerable. They might
Speaker 4: be even you know, not wanting to go home and
Speaker 4: tell mom and dad that they've lost their job. They're
Speaker 4: an enduring priority for the Fairwork comferenceman and amongst other
Speaker 4: vulnerable workers, we pay particular attention to them. And if
Speaker 4: there is a situation when one of our inspectors goes
Speaker 4: into a workplace and it's got a lot of young
Speaker 4: workers in it, we make it a priority to address
Speaker 4: circumstances of that employer what.
Speaker 3: Should a worker do if they think they're being underpaid.
Speaker 4: It's really important to find out the facts, you know,
Speaker 4: not to sort of jump in and I guess you
Speaker 4: get into a conflict before you're absolutely sure. So they
Speaker 4: can jo in a union and contact that union and
Speaker 4: the union will tell them what the right amounts are.
Speaker 4: They can come onto the Fair Work Combotsman's website, or
Speaker 4: they can use our info line thirteen thirteen ninety four
Speaker 4: and talk to somebody about it. Many many employers, no doubt,
Speaker 4: once they find out there is an error, will want
Speaker 4: a remedy it. If that's not successful, then they can
Speaker 4: ask for more help from their union or from the
Speaker 4: Fair Work Combotsman, and we can actually do what's called
Speaker 4: a request for assistance and support them obtaining their rights.
Speaker 2: That's all we've got time for today on the Daily OS.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hear your stories of underpayment or working
Speaker 2: conditions and you know, the experiences you're having in the workplace,
Speaker 2: because it's really important to us and that's kind of
Speaker 2: what we're here for. You can reach out to us
Speaker 2: by jumping onto our Instagram and shooting us DMP. If
Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, would love you to share it
Speaker 2: with a friend and give us a rating and Spotify
Speaker 2: or Apple. We'll be back again tomorrow. Till then, have
Speaker 2: a great day,