“They should pay people what they owe them”: Union takes aim at Southern Cross Care Tasmania

Southern Cross Care Tasmania revealed a problem with its systems resulted in employees losing millions of dollars, but the aged care is only paying up for the last six years. LATEST >>

An aged care provider which underpaid staff millions of dollars will only reimburse those who were underpaid within the last six years.

Southern Cross Care on Monday revealed its employees were collectively owed at least $6m, which was discovered in April 2020.

Southern Cross Care CEO Robyn Boyd said the company self-reported itself to the Fair Work ombudsman and is co-operating.

“I started with Southern Cross Care in March 2020 and a week after I started it was brought to my attention there might be a potential issue,” Ms Boyd said.

“I engaged KPMG to do an analysis and to do a review.

“It became obvious there was an underpayment.”

Ms Boyd said the underpayments was due to outdated payroll and rostering systems.

“Now we’ve found this issue, we’ve upgraded our payment and rostering systems,” she said.

“We’ve fixed the problem and want to move forward, we’re repaying all staff impacted what they’re owed.

“On behalf of the board and management of Southern Cross Care Tasmania I’d like to apologise to past and current staff affected by this issue.”

Southern Cross Care, Rivulet

Ms Boyd said it was not known exactly how many staff were owed money.

Current employees have been informed and past employees will be contacted in the coming days.

“We will not receive a detailed report until we receive KPMG’s final report, which we expect toward the end of January 2022.”

“We would like to replay them money owed plus interest.”

The CEO said the analysis only went back six years, as legally required, meaning those potentially underpaid outside of that time frame will not be reimbursed.

“Given the hundreds of thousands of documents to be reviewed and the difficulties of analysing the numerous, extremely complex, enterprise agreements we have, across each of our sites and for the past six years, the review has taken the better part of two years,” Chair Stephen Shirley said.

The Health and Community Services Union said there could be hundreds of employees affected.

“They have over a thousand employees currently,” HACSU assistant secretary Robbie Moore said.

“Unfortunately because of the way they’ve been treating their staff there’s been high turnover so we’d speculate this would affect hundreds of workers, some who still work for them.”

HACSU assistant secretary Robbie Moore. Picture: MATHEW FARRELL

Mr Moore said the investigation needed to look further back than six years.

“They’re trying to hide behind the statute of limitations,” he said.

“They should pay people what they owe them which would go back at least fourteen years when the struck an enterprise agreement.”

Mr Moore also said the union had launched its own investigation into the matter after seeking more information.

“Til now they’ve provided no information except that it’s in relation to overtime payments,” he said

“We’re disappointed in the fact they’ve known about this for an extended time, since early last year and haven’t come clean.”

Embattled Tassie aged care provider underpays workers $6M

Southern Cross Care Tasmania has apologised to staff after discovering their employees were underpaid overtime entitlements by about $6 million.

SCC Tas CEO Robyn Boyd said they were working with auditor KPMG to analyse their payroll and rostering data.

“On behalf of the Board and management of Southern Cross Care Tasmania I’d like to apologise to past and current staff affected by this issue,” Ms Boyd said.

“Wage underpayments are unacceptable in any organisation and we are sorry it has happened here. Rest assured we take this issue very seriously. We are dedicated to ensuring all our past and current employees are paid their correct overtime amounts.”

SCC Tas has been the subject of controversy in recent months, including its Rivulet nursing home failing a government safety audit after flouting Covid-19 infection rules, abandoning an elderly resident alone on a toilet for an hour and failing to monitor another’s severe weight loss placing its residents at “severe risk’’.

Most recently, the provider was accused of plannings to cut the hours of catering staff in four of its southern facilities.

The Health and Community Services Union said the move would leave residents waiting longer for food that is more likely to be served cold.

The provider disputed those claims, saying it had identified improvements that could be made to food services via feedback from resident focus groups and it was now implementing those changes.

The KPMG review into the payroll and rostering data is not yet complete, so SCC Tasmania does not yet have a final figure of the underpayments or the exact number of employees affected, they said in a statement.

The review will be completed by KPMG in early 2022 and the remediation process would begin after that.

“We self-reported the issue to the Fair Work Ombudsman and are co-operating with them to ensure that, once the review is complete, we will then repay all the money, with interest, we owe our valued current and past employees,” Ms Boyd said.

Southern Cross Care, Rivulet

SCC Tas said current employees had been informed of the issue and former staff would be informed over the coming days.

They said based on the review, “it is clear the problems arose due to outdated payroll and rostering systems, which resulted in incorrect calculations or records of overtime paid for some employees”.

The aged care provider has introduced a new payroll and rostering system, with the aim to ensure these issues don’t happen again.

Chair of the Board of SCC Tas Stephen Shirley said the board first became aware of a potential problem in January 2020.

“Ms Boyd was briefed on the situation about a week after she started as CEO,” Mr Shirley said.

“KPMG and our lawyers were then appointed to review our pay records and compare them to our Enterprise Agreements to see if there were discrepancies.”

“Given the hundreds of thousands of documents to be reviewed and the difficulties of analysing the numerous, extremely complex, enterprise agreements we have, across each of our sites and for the past six years, the review has taken the better part of two years.

“Our focus now is on making sure we complete this reconciliation thoroughly and as quickly as possible.”

Ms Boyd said once the report was received by KMPG they would begin the remediation process.

“After a period of consultation with our past and current employees, we will ensure payment and interest are paid to those individuals affected,” she said.

Originally published as “They should pay people what they owe them”: Union takes aim at Southern Cross Care Tasmania