Vietnamese eatery operators Viet Quoc Mai and Huong Le fined $802,000 for exploiting workers
The Federal Court has thrown the book at a husband and wife owner of two eateries in Adelaide for multiple employment law offences – including forcing staff to buy them bubble tea.
SA News
Don't miss out on the headlines from SA News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The husband and wife operators of two Adelaide Vietnamese eateries must pay more than $800,000 after a court found they underpayed migrant workers hundreds of thousands of dollars – and forced them to buy their bosses bubble tea if they made mistakes.
The Federal Court has ordered the couple pay back $407,546, plus interest and superannuation, to 36 workers employed at Mr Viet restaurants in Rundle Mall and Chinatown.
The court also imposed fines of $265,000 for Viet Quoc Mai and $130,000 for his wife Huong Le for the civil offences.
The workers were mostly international students aged under 25 who were paid as little as $15 an hour when they were employed between January, 2018 and September, 2021.
The workers were casuals, engaged as kitchen attendants, bar and waitstaff and in customer service roles. Mr Mai and Ms Le underpaid individual workers amounts ranging from $75 to $58,592.
The court found the couple had a “strike board system” to punish employees for mistakes. After six strikes, an employee would be made to buy food and drinks for Mr Mai, Ms Le or other employees.
In October, 2020, an employee was sent to buy bubble tea drinks for Ms Le and the other employees working in the restaurant that Saturday and the following Monday.
In February 2021, an employee was made to transfer more than $50 to Ms Le’s personal bank account for the purchase of bubble teas, also for Ms Le and the other workers.
The court found Mr Mai also broke the law when he took money out of employees’ pay packets for claims they had incorrectly charged a customer and had failed to properly close a refrigerator door.
The penalties were imposed for a range of contraventions, including: Giving false records to Fair Work inspectors; underpaying or not paying minimum rates, weekend and public holiday loading, and overtime rates; failing to compensate employees for taking no meal breaks; and employees being unreasonably required to spend their own money.
Workplace laws relating to record-keeping and issuing pay slips were also breached, including giving false records to inspectors.
Mr Mai was found to have made the regulator believe he was back-paying his workers, giving one of them $10,000, which he then made the worker repay in what Justice Stephen McDonald called a “calculated and dishonest course of conduct”.
Justice McDonald said the underpaid workers were visa holders from backgrounds where English was not their first language, and that Mr Mai’s conduct was an exploitation of the employer-employee relationship.
“Mr Mai’s repeated dishonest attempts to conceal contraventions and to mislead the FWO investigation leave me with a concern that he is a person who is prepared to act dishonestly when he thinks it will be to his benefit,” he said.
Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said the contraventions were disgraceful.
“These substantial penalties highlight that exploiting vulnerable migrant workers is particularly reprehensible conduct that will not be tolerated in Australia,” Ms Booth said.
“If you exploit your workers you will be found out and called out. The respondents have been left with court orders to pay more than $800,000 because of their unlawful conduct.”
The court found that several of Mr Mai’s breaches – including non-payment and underpayment of rates and loadings and making and keeping false and misleading records – were serious contraventions of Protecting Vulnerable Workers laws.
Fair Work Inspectors discovered the underpayments when auditing the eateries as part of surprise inspections of restaurants, cafes and fast food outlets in Adelaide’s Chinatown precinct in 2021. Those inspections recovered wages for more than 300 underpaid workers.
Originally published as Vietnamese eatery operators Viet Quoc Mai and Huong Le fined $802,000 for exploiting workers
Truckie’s reckless act leaves motorcyclist clinging to life
Police are seeking witnesses after a motorcyclist was critically injured when forced off the road by a veering truck on the Princes Highway.
‘No answers’ in Charlene’s death led to brother’s drug rampage
The brother of Charlene Warrior ramped up his drug use and committed a violent home invasion after there were no answers into how his sister was left dead in plain sight.