Australia has 120 Modern Awards, plus many enterprise bargaining agreements in place, to ensure employees are paid fairly for their work. Within these awards and agreements there are many provisions relating to different penalty rates and entitlements employers must provide to their employees. When these provisions aren’t met, employees can be underpaid their correct wages.
As in the Woolworths case, where a salaried employee is mistakenly believed to be an ‘award free’ manager, there is a potential for underpayments. Find out why and what you can do about it.
As part of the 4 yearly review of modern awards, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) has made a decision concerning the annualised salary arrangements contained in the Restaurant Industry Award 2020 and the Hospitability Industry (General) Award 2020.
In our recent article, we explained how the coverage under the Miscellaneous Award has been expanded by the Fair Work Commission (FWC). This has meant that ER Strategies is fielding a lot of questions from clients about this change and how award coverage works.
Once you’ve identified the correct base rate to pay your employees, you’ll also need to ensure that any penalty rates are applied, and relevant allowances are paid. These are often areas where businesses make mistakes that lead to them underpaying their employees, so it is crucial for businesses to understand what they need to pay their employees and when they need to pay them each rate.
Looking for information on the latest annual wage review – just click here.
One of the most common errors we’ve identified that leads to underpayments are businesses incorrectly classifying employees, whether that be choosing the wrong award, or employee classification within it. Ensuring that your employees are being paid under the correct award is the first step to being payroll compliant. Failing to be compliant at these first steps means all other payroll compliance measures in place within your business will be redundant.
Payroll Compliance seems like a simple issue.
Wage theft has become a prominent issue in Australia, with the FWO recovering over $500 million in underpayments across the previous financial year. This figure has been growing year on year, highlighting that the issue has likely been there for sometime, yet is now coming into the spotlight. As a result, both Queensland and Victoria have brought in legislation.
A recent report published by the Franchise Council of Australia highlights how buying a franchise can be a very good business decision and can outperform the wider SME sector.
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