The Fair Work Ombudsman has taken court action against Super Retail Group over unpaid wages
The Fair Work Ombudsman isn’t happy about the way Super Retail Group calculated and repaid $52.7m in lost wages to its staff and has taken legal action in the Federal Court.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has filed proceedings against Super Retail Group, owner of Rebel, Supercheap, Macpac and BCF, over its calculation and payback of $52.7m in lost wages to its staff.
The Ombudsman alleges that it had determined – after conducting a review into a sample of staff who were paid back wages – Super Retail workers were not paid their full wages and remediation with some underpayments small and others ranging to as high as $34,500.
The Ombudsman had begun an investigation after Super Retail disclosed widespread underpayments between 2017 and 2019.
The Fair Work Ombudsman’s legal action focuses on a sample of 146 of the allegedly underpaid employees across the group. It is alleged that the employees were underpaid a total of approximately $1.14m for their work between January 2017 and March 2019.
“The regulator alleges that most of the underpayments were the result of Super Retail Group’s subsidiaries paying salaried employees annual salaries that failed to cover their minimum lawful entitlements, given they generally performed significant amounts of overtime work,” it said. “The FWO also alleges that the methodology used by Super Retail Group in its remediation program has resulted in only partial back-payment of the sample employees.”
Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker said keeping employers accountable remained a priority. “The breaches alleged in this case – inadequate annual salaries for employees stretching across multiple years – have become a persistent issue for businesses across many industries,” Ms Parker said.
Super Retail had paid back the $52.7m in lost wages and spent another $8m on lawyers, advisers and other experts to help it work out the remediation process and how much was owed to its staff.
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