Australian bosses could go to jail for 10 years and be fined $1.65 million if they “deliberately” underpay their workers, as part of new laws that nationally criminalise wage theft from January 1.
The new laws and penalties follow years of underpayment scandals in Australia, with cases at prominent employers including Woolworths, Chatime, Qantas, NAB, BHP, 7-Eleven and the ABC.
Until now, the federal body that investigates wage theft has only been able to go after companies and their directors using civil laws, which don’t come with the threat of jail time.
Now Fair Work will be able to go after them using criminal laws too.
But it will have to prove that the employer intentionally avoided paying a worker appropriate wages and penalties, superannuation or other entitlements.
“This doesn’t include honest mistakes,” a Fair Work spokesperson told ABC News.
[…]
Any individual found guilty could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $1.65 million, while liable companies could be fined up to $8.25 million.
“deliberate” seems like a pretty high bar. Of course it doesn’t stop employer groups crying that literally stealing is being made illegal.
Hopefully if an employer does it repeatedly, that meets the bar of deliberately.
I hope you’re right, but I suspect a case like this will not count still because “oh the payroll didn’t work properly” means you didn’t do an audit but you didn’t deliberately do it.
i’d imagine if an employee brings up that they’re being underpaid (perhaps anonymously), and then nothing changes then that constituted deliberate
Yeah, seems a bit hard to prove if the wage theft is “deliberate” or a mistake.
And sometimes they deliberately allow mistakes that occur in their favour.