Why young workers keep getting screwed by big companies

A MAJOR retailer had to grovel before Australia after it underpaid workers for years. There’s a key reason no one noticed.

YOUNG workers are getting screwed out of their breaks and earnings — because they don’t realise they’re entitled to them.

Cosmetics giant Lush was yesterday forced to admit it had underpaid its workers for years — but it’s far from the only time young workers were screwed due to their ignorance on the matter.

A 23-year-old man working for a major national retailer in Sydney told news.com.au he was underpaid thousands of dollars by a his employer over the course of two years.

The international student came to Sydney from India to study accounting, and believed that he had scored a decent job for a foreign student worker.

What he didn’t realise was that the supermarket chain he worked for was docking a portion of his pay over every shift he worked.

“I was working 18 hours a week, and getting an unpaid break for one and a half hours,” he said. “Around the end of 2017, a friend happened to come into my store, and he mentioned that all the other retailers were paying their staff for this half an hour break.”

The worker took his case to the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association retail union (SDA) and was paid $2450 after winning his case.

During the meeting, his employer claimed it was a “system error”. But he believes his supermarket colleagues are still not being paid the correct amount because they don’t want to come forward.

“Everyone is too scared to talk about it,” he said. “They think they might lose their jobs.

“We’re international students — we’ve already got a work limit of 20 hours, and we don’t want to lose that.”

The underpaying of retail workers is under renewed scrutiny after cosmetics giant Lush admitted yesterday it had underpaid more than 5000 workers over the past eight years, and would now pay back $2 million.

Some employees, most of whom work part-time, are owed up to $10,000.

Lush also blamed “system errors” for the underpayments.

In a statement to Fairfax Media, Lush Australia director Peta Granger said: “We are deeply sorry to our valued staff and customers that we’ve failed to uphold the values that we have always believed in and the high standards that we’ve always sought to achieve.

“We would never knowingly underpay. This was not deliberate. It goes against everything we value and believe in.”

Cosmetics giant Lush recently admitted it had underpaid more than 5000 workers over the past eight years, and will now pay back $2 million.

But what’s driving this, and why aren’t more young workers speaking up?

According to the SDA, young people have limited knowledge of their rights in the workplace.

“Young people entering the workforce for the first time have very little knowledge of their rights or the role unions can play in helping them with their workplace problems,” national secretary Gerard Dwyer said.

“It’s safe to say that a large number of young people barely know unions exist, let alone how they can help, or why they should join one.

“Additionally, research from the University of Sydney found that 25 per cent of student retail workers were being underpaid, and 35 per cent were not receiving the correct weekend rates.”

The SDA said it was targeting young people on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and videos to teach people about wages, weekends, annual leave and equal pay, as well as through a young worker hub called 100 per cent Pay.

It comes as the Australian Council of Trade Unions is on a drive to recruit young workers, particularly those working in non-unionised workplaces.

@gavindfernando | [e-mail]

Originally published as Why young workers keep getting screwed by big companies