I heard a lot of sad stories of people working for $10-15.p.h (20+ age) in Hospitality and retail.
Is there anything we could do to stop this.
From what I heard, Big giants in retail and many franchisees are underpaying their staff in cash. Any ideas to make this system better?
And because they don't the law. While the farmer's kids are splashing the cash.
@Other: After the farmers paid for a good education on fruit picker money.
Or moved off the land with assistance of their family.
Don't forget government subsidies when there is droughts or floods.
I don't see the government stuffing a $50 in my letter box every time there is a flood or a drought. All I get is either a hike in utilities, council rates etc because cost is going up.
Except you’re screwing Australians..
All visa workers should have their workrights removed should they work outside of the Australian award system.
still wouldn't stop them from working.
But then what about Australians? Stripped of citizenship?
Most employers ignore the 20 hours a week rule for the students, who can live on that, it’s ridiculous. People are always going to rort the system but it’s set up to fail atm
No. The fact that most of us continue to shop at these stores is proof that we are perfectly happy to exploit the underpaid workers just as much as the companies are. If you think it's so atrocious, don't shop there. The company will eventually get the message and be forced into change.
Most people won't do that because their food is too damn cheap to resist - due to the lower wage bill producing it.
Meanwhile, the workers have the power to walk away. The business will eventually run short on staff if they keep doing this. If the workers want more money, they can do what the rest of us need to do in order to increase our pay. Look for a better paying job, or convince your emoyer to pay you more by making yourself indispensable. If the rest of the country can do it, they can too. If they can't, tough shit. Welcome to Australia, a free marketplace which rewards competitive innovation and progress, and punishes the weak. Welcome to Capitalism.
I have no idea what workers are paid because employers demand non-disclosures.
Why the (profanity) do shoppers have to worry about wages? Are we now USA? Should I tip 10%? 25%?
Don't think you understand how the economy works if you think shoppers have nothing to do with wages.
Minimum wage rises mean price increases. Once we fix the problem of retail workers being underpaid we'll start hearing people complain about how petrol or their burger is too expensive. Can't win.
Biggest complaint I hear from business owners is rent and wages. But news only reports on wages.
More money for workers mean more business activity. More money for rent means less business activity because they just hoard money.
Lets bring down rents!
Hmm, funny. When I ordered my burger and fries yesterday, I didn't see that it came with a side of 50% underpayment to staff on the menu. Maybe I just need to read closer?
You just underpaid for your full size burger and fries that is all.
Hahahahaha if workers want more pay they are free to find a better paying job.
@Jugganautx: You are either not reading, can't comprehend or just taking the piss and on $15 a hour yourself.
@Jugganautx: Yes let me just open up my job book and see all the jobs fall out into my lap. Problem Solved. Thanks.
Why is this downvoted? lol. Vote with your wallet has always been a thing, problem is that people don't actually do it.
Cash in hand work. Been around for decades, ain't going anywhere. How many tradesmen I've had do work that operate 2 separate books. The cash book usually has more turnover in most cases, the exception being where their wholesaler/distributor gets ATO audited.
Most tradies are not on minimum wage. For the amount they charge and trying to get away with it, they are taking the piss. Most of them drive nice utes and SUVs.
So you are proud of having no ethics and will support these leaches?
@coin saver. This ain't about ethics. Its Free Enterprise. If the government price themselves out of taxation collecting its their own fault. I don't go around collecting pats on the back for following the ATO Tax Guide.
OP should mind his own business.
It has nothing to do with you OP.
What mutally beneficial arrangements an employer makes with any employee is private and entirely up to them.
In most instances its a case of securing a job.
So OP leave these people be.
It works for both of them and thats all that matters
What mutally beneficial arrangements an employer makes with any employee is private and entirely up to them.
Um, this isn't true. Wage theft is illegal.
Private contracts can't override Australian employment law.
Mate you have no idea about the real world in which these people live so just dont say anything.
Academic Do-gooders like you just put people out of a job.
Thanks but no thanks
Your contribution is not required.
"Your contribution is not required" Neither is yours (profanity) however railspider is talking fact you are talking shit.
You make mutually beneficial like profit share. How many businesses do that? It is like wishing for a benevolent dictatorship.
noob here, what's a union, is it free to join?
Sorry mate. There is a monthly fee.
I think its partly Ozbargain fault! How can businesses stay afloat with all the bargains they offer(or their competitors).
You hit th nail on the head
Most OzB are products not service / food. Therefore doesn't really make sense.
Stop importing all the immigrants which increase workers' supply, thus the ability for employers to lower the salary and still find someone who will work happily?
Wait, nevermind, that's racist.
hurr durr just increase minimum wage!!!1111
It never works, everything just increases in price under the rationale "oh people have more money now, so we can increase the price!"
In other scenarios it barely helps to catch up to inflation rate.
Stop buying from companies that does not pay proper taxes here so small businesses can compete.
It's impossible to compete when all your competitors are paying wages as low as $7 an hour and typically only around $10 to $15. It's normal and open practice in Melbourne for basically all but the top restaurants. The government knows it is going on and only makes ostensible efforts to do anything. They know mostly international students work in these establishments so they are putting one industry (education) above another (hospitality) because a true crackdown would significantly reduce the numbers coming over.
The sad reality is is a terrible industry to be in, low wages, no super, hours well longer than advertised and a big culture of drug and alcohol use to cope with shit conditions.
If you are getting paid $7 an hour you wouldn't have enough money for drugs and alcohol, if they are using their money for that then not a very good move.
You are right. But what is the point of having students come over and giving them an underpaid experience. It is like going home working in third world conditions and lying about you got a 1st world degree.
I can't see how making sure international students get paid more for their part time job here in Australia would dissuade them from coming over though.
When you are paying lower wages you can afford to employ more people.
And you can actually stay in business when otherwise you could not.
Also when you pay full wages there is less incentive to hire an international student with low English skills over someone else.
That's why almost all the 7-Eleven stores were paying foreign workers as low as $7 an hour and/or forcing them to give back money.
A friend of mine was underpaid for some months in a boutique then she reported that to some authority (I don't know which one she spoke to) and got her missing portion back. That was done before she left the country for good. The second half of the story was that boutique was also out of business within the same year.
This big retailers underpaid by getting the staff to stay back for free. This might not happened everywhere, but I used to work at one when I was in uni and few of my mate got no choice but to clock off then stayed back for another 2 to 4 hours to "finish" the job otherwise they wont be getting the next shift or call.
Did you tell them to grow some balls? Your mates are the ones causing this mess.
Well they were mostly int student and casual. They need the money i guess, some of them did though but the one that did ended up receiving the less amount of shift every week and eventually quit.
Same for most salaried employees some may call it exploitation as well but most cases are legal.
There are industries which exploit certain groups like overseas students by systematically underpaying them.
But these recent reports of big organisations underpaying lots of staff mostly involve them falling foul of one particular clause in the law, someone complaining to a union, and the union running with the issue to get members.
It is the "no disadvantage" clause. A company decides for a group of employees that rather than keeping track of hours every one of them works, and calculating and paying overtime, they just offer them an all-in pay rate that includes any overtime. To sign away rights like overtime every single person has to be better off. Then afterwards along comes someone who says I am disadvantaged because I worked enough overtime that at the award rate plus overtime I would have gotten more than this. And, presto, the organisation has broken the law. The only way it can protect itself is to keep track of everyone's working hours, and calculate how much they would have gotten on an award rate plus overtime deal. But it was saving that cost that was the whole point of the exercise.
Join your union. Stand up. Become a delegate. Fight for what’s right.
From what I heard, Big giants in retail and many franchisees are underpaying their staff in cash.
If they're paying cash in hand, report them.
I heard a lot of sad stories of people working for $10-15.p.h (20+ age) in Hospitality and retail. Is there anything we could do to stop this.
If they're being paid below minimum wages, report them.
There's not a whole lot else you can do unless they're doing something illegal.
Reduce the damn TAX for small businesses.
10% goes to GST
10% goes Rent
30% goes to stock
33% goes to Wages
5% goes to utility bill
12% is the profit of which
Wait for it….
30% goes to company TAX
And income TAX maybe
You will be lucky to make 5-6% from any business
Oh by the way that 33% wage?
That doesn't include long service leave annual leave Super
And if any of them get hurt your business is gone.
You can't open on Sundays because penalty rate of 150% makes it pointless to operate.
Your % are wrong. For start 10% GST on rent goes as input credit to the 10% GST on sales.
Yeah so what you will be lucky to get more than 10%-20% of GST back as deduction anyway.
And to be honest time it takes to do administration for GST deduction is waste of productivity and in it self cost around $400 per quarter as account in fee.
So funny how government wonders why small businesses are dying.
You need a better accountant mate. I get quarterly GST for half the price you are talking about.
GST is not a deduction. You have taxes and expenses mixed together.
@netjock: What are you on about
You pay GST on goods services and you deduct that from GST you owe to the ATO.
I never said GST itself is a deduction.
Yeah so what you will be lucky to get more than 10%-20% of GST back as deduction anyway.
You either need to read what you write or write it properly.
If you are serious about GST it is just a pass through. At every stage it is a passed through. At supplier you get charged 10% (which they pass to ATO) which the ATO calls an input credit, you add a margin which you add GST on top. You pass that through less the credit.
You know most small companies get into trouble with ATO because of how cash flow works with GST.
@netjock: In theory yes GST is passthrough
But in reality it doesn't work the way you think.
Example:
Recently sacked Toyota employee opens a small Fish N Chips shop
Keeps the GST a side as he should
First quarter ends in loss he has no money to feed his kids or pay for for mortgage
Now do you expect him to not touch that money and go "oh let's do the right thing and pay the GST because ATO is more important than my family"?
GST is borderline unconstitutional.
Why add tax on tax? and make companies do extra administration and kill the productivity?
What about cars? GST andStamp Duty
Petrol? GST and fuel excise?
Like WTF??
@nurbsenvi: I guess you have no idea.
Fish'n'Chip guy buys stock for $550 incl GST. Total sales $1100 incl GST. Input credit $50. GST liability $100. Payment to ATO is $50 because $50 was prepaid.
If businessman sells his $550 of stock for $440 he gets a refund of $10.
Why do you think ATO should be letting you dip into tax to feed your family? Isn't Centrelink payments also tax revenue?
If tax is unconstitutional then I guess you have some magic that builds roads and hospitals.
I dislike government fat cats but I have the same dislike for people who seem to want instant rebates for stuff they don't perceive they use and expect roads and hospitals to magically fall out the other end.
@netjock: lol
Stock $550 and sells for $1100
Right there is the evidence that you don't know what you are talking about.
That's like 50% in stock
Industry average on food item stock ratio is 30 to 33% otherwise everyone will go bankrupt in a heartbeat.
You just inflated the price of the stock to enforce your ignorant opinion.
I said GST is unconstitutional not TAX it self.
GST is intrinsically unconstitutional because it's a TAX provisioned by Law not by Taxation which is unconstitutional and in some cases is TAX on TAX as well.
GST is introduced because it's a quick and lazy way of grabbing money from citizens running busineses to cover their bureaucratic failure to maintain precious budget collected from blood and sweat of the citizens.
You are failing to see that GST is government offloading their workload to business and citizens.
@nurbsenvi: Using an example easy to understand not actuals. Stop but picking on irrelevant issues.
I have no idea what you are on about regarding how GST is not by legislation. Guess you are not a lawyer.
If you don't want the government to offload their workload then pay more tax. It isn't rocket science. You must think unicorns surf on rainbows and there is pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Yeah used to happen alot at JB Hifi, they didn't like us doing overtime If we did it was in the payment of a Bluray or set amount of credit, If we stayed back 15/30 mins it was never paid, training nights at suppliers and monthly meetings all unpaid (And was a requirement of the job) they canned double time on Sunday's when the new laws came out at the drop of the hat (Yet still didn't open longer hours)
We were never underpaid, but were getting taken for a ride at the same time.
From the few JB hi-fi workers I knew, they were doing pretty well for a job with no quals required, especially after maximizing their SPIVs.
I work for a HR Support/Software provider. 9/10 small businesses who are under paying staff are doing it unintentionally. With the large businesses, there is no way they cannot know this.
Intentionally underpaying staff (Wage Theft) is now going to be able to be considered a criminal offence.
I think there are going to be a few big organisations who are going to get punched in the face by Fair Work and it will make others tighten up (Something we are trying to help people with).
Yes there are some smaller businesses that would not be viable if they paid full wages so their choices are:
1) Continue to underpay and hope they dont get caught.
2) Up the costs of goods.
We could end up in a place where we are paying $6 for a coffee and $40 for a basic steak just to cover these wages.
Nothing motivates you to do the right thing more than the prospect of going to jail
Unpopular opinion: Only bad workers get underpaid.
Be Better.
The solution is Marixsm. Confiscate the means of production from the capitalist class and equally distribute wealth producing asset among the wage slave. Then send the capitalists to gulags and work them till they drop dead (an unnecessary step, but they deserve it).
As long as capitalism exist, there will be massive inequities bwtween owners and menials.
I get what you're saying in terms of having more democratic rights for workers which inherently favours capitalists.
However there are a few issues in current times:
1) Marxism is a very wide concept and many marxists do not agree with each other. No standardised version or agreement exists between different marxist groups.
2) Confiscation is almost an unrealistic expectation with the current level of organisation of the working classes.
3) Equal distribution for unequal performance is always going to lead to people doing minimum work or other performance issues. An incentive system would be better along with wages.
4) Sending all capitalists to gulags would be like (GOT Reference) Danerys punishing all masters, some masters were actually fighting for good reforms and they will die. This is not a good solution, in the past this lead to mob lynching.
As long as capitalism exist, there will be massive inequities bwtween owners and menials.
As long as capitalism exist, there will be massive inequities between workers and capitalists.
TERRIBLE idea. Go look at where that eventually leads you (think China, Russia, etc). I'm assuming you are being sarcastic.
The best and easiest thing we can do right now is simply start taxing the Amazons, Googles and other mega-businesses who essentially pay $0 tax.
Imagine the BILLIONS collected, which would mean you could stop milking small business and individual so much.
Fast food, retail, hospo, etc have always been rife with these types of shenannigans, specifically relating to frontline roles. For anyone whose worked in these industries for a prolonged period of time, many can tell you of horroe stories and examples of ridiculous unprofessionalism. It seems to be only recently that there is more awareness with relevant high profile, public cases. There is a hidden expectation from above that you will be required to do some amounts of unpaid hours, especially during peak periods. But you generally aren't given enough resources to do your job in the standard amount of time, its part and parcel of these industries and how they operate.
There is a an attitude towards churning and burning and there is a reason why these industries have high turnover of staff, some conditions can be prone to abuse. Systemic and cultural issues within these industries, it sucks and will take a long time to shift these attitudes, but the coverage on more recent high profile cases involving specific employers, workplace conditions and wage theft are a step in the right direction. All the more motivation to only spend as much time in these places as possible and move onto more professional workplaces with more accountability, that have less of an emphasis on directly serving the general public.
Well what do you think happens when you dramatically increase the labour pool?
Some steps I think would help
1.hospitality businesses have a sign that says 'we value our staff and pay them under the Xxxx award/ agreement. Sure not a perfect system though if companies cheat it opens them up to bigger consequences.
Require every person who applies to register a business complete an online course on hiring/ employing people.
Have every person applying for a visa with work rights complete a course about work rights in Australia as part of the visa process. Require visa workers to arrive in Australia with more money to sustain them.
More naming and shaming of those who do wrong. Particularly within one community.
Heavier penalties for pheonixing
Changing buying habits. We all go to eateries where we know the people there aren't getting paid right. If the food is cheap and there are lots of workers, chances are they are underpaid.
Get rid of overseas student working in Australia.
*students
Are you going to pick up the multi billion dollar hole that will cause? Many students choose Australia over other countries to study because Australia allows them to work.
To solve one problem, you will create another problem.
Australia seem to manage just fine previously?
Union will drive businesses out of business and there will be no job for people
Underpaying Employers Everywhere! Is There Anything We Can Do to Stop This as a Union?
employers can only said : if you dont want the job, there are lots of others who needs money want the job…
i think this is the reality, although i feel sorry for the underpaid staff [coz i also underpaid while i work for others, even in engineering field…]
but no more, sick of the political issue in the office. happy to run my own business now…. most companies only care on their own profits…
unless government provide a systematic and provide hefty penalty for those companies who underpay worker, otherwise, there will be no ending on underpaid stories
I'm probably a bit late to this conversation, but this is normal and a fact of life. It's been like this for many decades. No one really talks about it.
Most Asian stores will only pay ~$8 an hour.
It also doesn't help that Australia's minimum wage is 2x US wage adjusted for exchange rate.
Because they don’t want to pay Australian wages they can just pay them (profanity) all and they can hide out from being deported for overstaying