‘Resistance to hard work’: Massage shop fined $118,800 over underpayments, punishments

A MASSAGE business which fined its staff up to $100 for offences including “lack of passion” and “resistance to hard work” has been penalised.

Undated : Generic. Woman receiving a massage and salt scrub. health treatment

A MASSAGE business which fined its staff up to $100 for offences including “lack of passion” and “resistance to hard work” has itself been fined more than $100,000.

Lu’s Healthcare Pty Ltd, which operates massage shops in Melbourne’s CBD and Richmond, has been fined $112,860 and director Kun Wang a further $5940 following legal action by the Fair Work Ombudsman.

Judge John O’Sullivan found two Chinese massage therapists were short-changed tens of thousands of dollars. A male therapist in his 20s was underpaid $33,000, and a 19-year-old female therapist was underpaid $21,000.

In what the Ombudsman says is common practice in the massage industry, the therapist was paid a percentage of each massage they performed, rather than the minimum wage under the Health Professionals and Support Services Award.

The massage shop.

The court found Lu’s Healthcare “arbitrarily” deducted certain amounts from the workers’ take-home pay under an in-house Code of Conduct.

Employees could be fined $100 for being late to work or absent without notice, $50 for “a lack of passion or good hospitality”, and under a “disturbance of the work environment category”, employees could be fined $20 for “noise making and playing around” and sleeping or lying on massage tables.

For talking or speaking on the phone during a massage employees could lose their jobs, while the punishment for “resistance to hard work” was being “put back in apprenticeship again”. The Code also stated that “employees with other problems will undergo serious punishment”.

Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James said the penalties should serve as a warning to employers who flout their workplace obligations.

“Minimum wage rates apply to everyone — including visa-holders — and they are not negotiable,” she said.

Ms James said the Ombudsman had received information the business model was “relatively common”. Employees, in many cases international students or backpackers on 417 working holiday visas, are typically paid 50 per cent of the cost of the massage.

Lu’s Healthcare could not be reached for comment.

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