David Jones owner Woolworths Holdings underpays staff $3.7m

The owner of David Jones and Country Road blames system errors as it joins other retailers, underpaying staff $3.7m.

Underpayments at David Jones totalled $1.35m over six years.

South Africa’s Woolworths Holdings, which owns up-market department store David Jones and the Country Road Group, has admitted underpaying staff by $3.7m, blaming errors in its rostering and payroll systems.

The underpayments, affecting more than 7000 staff over six years, mean Woolworths Holdings joins a series of major Australian retailers in admitting to underpaying workers.

Wesfarmers, the unrelated Australian supermarket giant Woolworths, Super Retail Group and jewellery retailer Michael Hill are among others to uncover millions of dollars in unpaid wages.

South Africa’s Woolworths Holdings said that following a review it has identified underpayments affecting some team members in its David Jones and Country Road Group businesses.

“Woolworths Holdings apologises unreservedly to all team members impacted by this issue, and is committed to making full back-payments plus interest to all team members by mid-October.

“Payment errors were identified as a result of system changes in late 2019. Following identification of these issues, Woolworths Holdings undertook a comprehensive audit of all payment processes across David Jones and the CRG brands.”

Country Road Group includes the Country Road, Trenery, Politix, Mimco and Witchery brands.

Woolworths Holdings said the audit was completed earlier this month and blamed the underpayments on integration errors within rostering and payroll systems.

The total of underpayments at David Jones was $1.35m over a six-year period, affecting 6200 staff. team members. The majority related to superannuation entitlements.

Underpayments at Country Road totalled $2.36m over six years, affecting 1100 staff, mostly in the Politix business.

Country Road Group staff lost out on $2.36m over six years. Picture: Glen Norris

Ian Moir, interim chief executive at David Jones said: “Our team members should expect to be paid correctly. We deeply regret this has not occurred and apologise unreservedly to our team. We are now focused on ensuring our team members are paid the money owing to them as quickly as possible.”

Scott Fyfe, chief executive of Country Road Group added: “We sincerely apologise to all team members impacted by this issue, and are working hard to resolve the matter immediately.

“The cause of underpayment across the CRG brands was identified as poor systems integration, with the material impact coming from the acquisition of Politix in 2016.

“We’ve now completed a thorough review of systems and processes and taken the necessary steps across the Group to ensure these errors cannot be repeated.”

KPMG advised on the review and Woolworths Holdings has told the Australian Taxation Office, Fair Work Ombudsman and SDA of the outcomes.

Supermarket giant Woolworhs Group last year unveiled the biggest underpaid wages bill in Australian corporate history, saying first that as many as 5700 staff had missed out on more than $300m. The total quickly grew to almost $500m as its payroll system was investigated.