Woolworths and its subsidiary taken to court over underpayment of dues
A supermarket giant has been taken to court for underpaying more than 1200 former staff upwards of $1m in long service leave.
Melbourne City
Don't miss out on the headlines from Melbourne City. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Supermarket giant Woolworths and its subsidiary Woolstar have admitted underpaying more than 1200 former staff upwards of $1m in long service leave over a three-year period.
The guilty pleas were entered in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday following weeks of negotiation between the companies and Wage Inspectorate Victoria which laid the charges.
The companies will be sentenced on April 24.
Woolworths and Woolstar underpaid 1227 former employees, with individual underpayments ranging from $250 to more than $12,000 between 2018 and 2021.
About 1999 employees were allegedly underpaid $963,355 at Woolworths and 36 employees were underpaid $47,591 at Woolstar.
Saul Holt KC, representing Woolworths and Woolstar, said the companies self-reported the breaches which occurred as a result of an IT anomaly that was fixed.
He submitted it was not a case of the supermarket giant trying to save $1m by witholding workers long service leave pay.
Mr Holt said the companies were willing to make remediation in case any further employee with outstanding entitlement made contact.
Kathleen Crennan from Wage Inspectorate Victoria said a large corporate entity such as Woolworths was unlikely to experience lasting economical and reputational damage as a result of the prosecution.
A Woolworths Group spokesperson said since 2019, the company has undertaken an extensive end-to-end review of its payroll systems and processes and discrete instances of potential non compliance in relation to long service leave were identified.
“We have since made back payments or corrected leave balances to affected team members, including interest and superannuation.
“We have apologised to affected team members and strengthened our payroll systems to address the long service leave issues we identified.”
Under Victoria’s 2018 long service law, workers get long service leave after seven years and employers must pay any unused entitlements once they leave their job.Most Victorian employees will be covered by and entitled to long service leave in accordance with the Long Service Leave Act, unless they have a long service leave entitlement from another source, such as under other legislation, a registered agreement, award or another law.
‘White Australia’ fundraiser raises $27k in just eight days
A crowd-funding page created by a controversial neo-Nazi figure has raised more than $27,000 to help “create a home for white people in Australia”.
Pictures: Victorian preppies start their first day of school
About 70,000 Victorian grade prep students have started their first year of school this week. Check back to see all the photos from primary schools across the state.