More than 2000 Hamilton Island staff backpaid $28.1m

The 2152 current and former staff were underpaid their award entitlements over an eight-year period.

Hamilton Island co-owner Sandy Oatley. Picture: Andrea Francolini

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2:09PMJanuary 30, 2025

The operators of Queensland’s Hamilton Island have backpaid $28.1m to more than 2000 current and former staff who were underpaid award entitlements over an eight-year period.

Under an enforceable undertaking signed with the Fair Work Ombudsman, Hamilton Island Enterprises and its wholly owned subsidiary, Hamilton Island Shared Services, must also make a $750,000 “contrition payment”.

HIE is a wholly owned subsidiary of 21st Century Resorts Holdings, a company controlled by the billionaire Oatley family that bought Hamilton Island in 2003.

Most of the underpayments were due to HIE and HISS paying annual salaries to full-time employees that did not cover their minimum award entitlements as many often performed overtime, shift work and work attracting penalty rates.

The most common entitlements underpaid included overtime rates, weekend and public holiday penalty rates, broken-shift allowances and annual leave loading.

The large majority of the underpaid staff worked across the range of businesses HIE operates on Hamilton Island, with a smaller number employed by HISS located at HIE’s corporate headquarters in Sydney.

Some common roles of underpaid workers included food and beverage supervisors, assistant restaurant managers, chefs, front office employees, clerical employees, housekeeping employees, handymen and concierges.

Most of the underpaid workers were covered by the Hospitality Industry (General) Awards 2010 and 2020, with others covered by more than 20 different awards.

To date, the companies have backpaid $28.1m, including more than $6m in interest and about $500,000 in superannuation, to 2152 current and former staff who were underpaid between 2014 and 2022.

A further $250,984, plus $10,954 in superannuation, is to be paid to unclaimed moneys for 32 employees not yet found.

The average backpayment had been about $8000 with one worker backpaid $119,446.

The contrition payment consists of $500,000 to the Commonwealth Consolidated Revenue Fund and $250,000 to the not-for-profit Cleaning Accountability Framework, which arose from a recognition that ending exploitation of cleaners needed a whole of industry approach.

Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said underpayments resulting from insufficient annual salaries for employees covered by awards had become a persistent issue among businesses of all sizes across many industries.

“Businesses paying annual salaries cannot take a ‘set-and-forget’ approach to paying their workers. Employers must ensure wages being paid are sufficient to cover all minimum lawful entitlements for the hours their employees are actually working,” she said.

She said an EU was an appropriate outcome as the companies had co-operated with the FWO’s investigation and demonstrated a strong commitment to rectifying its noncompliance issues and ensuring future compliance.

“Under the enforceable undertaking, the companies have committed to rectifying all underpayments they identify in full, plus interest and superannuation, and implementing stringent measures to ensure all staff are paid correctly in future,” Ms Booth said.

The EU requires the companies to commission one independent audit of its payments of salaried employees, tabling results to HIE’s board and reporting the results to the FWO.

They must commission workplace relations training for relevant staff, recruit a compliance officer within HIE to monitor its compliance with workplace laws, and run a dedicated employee hotline and email address for employees and their representatives to make any workplace relations queries.

The companies must also run an employee engagement survey and hold employee feedback sessions every three months.