‘Trolley collection contractors who were once part of supply chains for Woolworths, Coles and Foodland have been penalised more than $90,000 after overseas workers at Adelaide shopping centres were paid as little as $8 an hour’.
The penalties are a result of a Fair Work Ombudsman investigation which found 38 trolley collectors were collectively underpaid a total of $85,367 between February 2009 and November 2010 when they worked at shopping centres in Elizabeth, Marion, West Lakes, Fairview Park and Kurralta Park. The Fair Work Ombudsman noted that Woolworths, Coles and Foodland were operating at these sites at the time.
‘Adelaide man Ki Bok Jin, who deliberately underpaid the workers through his now defunct trolley collecting company South Jin Pty Ltd, has been penalised $44,350. Coastal Trolley Services Pty Ltd, which sub-contracted Jin’s company to provide trolley collection services, has also been penalised $38,000 and its major shareholder and director Edward Stroop a further $8500’.
Justice Richard White found that Jin had “adopted, deliberately, a system which would result in underpayments and sought to disguise that by producing wage records which were not just inaccurate, but false”. He described the underpaid workers as “young men with limited English and limited knowledge of their entitlements”.
“This meant that they were less likely to complain about their treatment. In this sense, they were a group of vulnerable employees,” he stated.
‘Under the Cleaning Services Award, permanent full time employees were entitled to receive at the time more than $14 and casual employees more than $17 for ordinary hours and more than $30 for some weekend and overtime work. Superannuation entitlements were also underpaid’.
“Outsourcing work to the lowest-cost contractor and turning a blind eye to whether the contractor pays workers’ correctly is not acceptable conduct,” said Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James.
“Increasingly, if we find a business underpaying workers and that business is part of a supply chain, we are looking up the supply chain to the companies that are the price-makers and controls the settings.”