Tasmanian community care operator underpaid staff $6.9 million
A Tasmanian community care organisation has underpaid 1,708 staff members almost $6.9 million.
Southern Cross Care discovered the wage theft during an internal review – finding fundamental errors in its payroll and human resources systems.
Tasmanian community care operator underpaid staff
Southern Cross is Tasmania’s largest provider of care services – operating aged care facilities and home and community care services.
The payroll errors discovered in 2021 include failing to have agreements in place with part-time staff to work additional hours at ordinary rates of pay.
As a result, the organisation failed to pay any overtime for these additional hours.
Southern Cross also failed to recognise that shift-workers without written agreements were entitled to be paid from the start of their first shift to the end of their final shift each day, rather than just the hours worked during the separate shifts.
This all happened between 2015 and 2021 – affecting 1,708 current and former staff.
This all happened between 2015 and 2021 affecting 1,708 current and former staff.
The affected staff
The affected staff included part-time aged care workers and nurses in addition to community care workers who performed shift work.
Some cleaners, laundry and maintenance staff were also underpaid.
Southern Cross is back-paying a total of $6.87 million, including $5,806,756 in wages and entitlements, plus $313,591 in superannuation and $754,181 in interest.
Individual back-payments range from less than $1 to more than $220,000.
Six workers were underpaid more than $100,000. The average back-payment is just over $4,000.
Whilst overtime entitlements accounted for the majority of total underpayments, employees were also underpaid wages for ordinary hours, penalty rates for weekend and public holiday work, as well as paid meal breaks and shift penalties and allowances, including sleepover allowance.
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Enforceable Undertaking
Instead of seeking court ordered penalties, the Fair Work Ombudsman has agreed to Southern Cross entering into an Enforceable Undertaking (EU).
Under the terms of the EU, not-for-profit must back-pay all staff by the end of September.
The EU also requires Southern Cross Care (Tasmania) to provide FWO with evidence of systems and processes it has put in place to ensure future compliance; commission workplace relations training for human resources, payroll and rostering staff; write to all underpaid employees to notify them of the commencement of the EU; and display workplace notices detailing its contraventions.
Industrial advocate Miles Heffernan described the underpayments as “unacceptable”.
Not good enough
Industrial advocate Miles Heffernan described the underpayments as “unacceptable”.
“It’s not good enough for large employers to make fundamental errors like this,” he said.
“This organisation failed to ensure that written agreements with part-time employees were in place – were then left unchecked, which inevitably led to this substantial underpayment.”
Meanwhile, Mr Heffernan advised anyone who has not been paid their proper wages and entitlements to seek urgent expert advice.
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