Stadium cleaners paid as little as $7 an hour

The Fair Work Ombudsman has secured $332,964 in penalties over the underpayment of cleaners.

Christian Petracca of the Demons during the round 17 AFL match between St Kilda and Melbourne at Marvel Stadium, formerly Eithad Stadium, where cleaners were paid as little as $7 an hour. Picture: Michael Klein

Quayclean, the national company with contracts to clean some of the country’s biggest stadiums, has been penalised following an underpayment controversy that saw cleaners paid as little as $7 an hour.

The Fair Work Ombudsman secured $332,964 in penalties, including $174,420 against Quayclean, in court in response to the underpayment of cleaners at Etihad Stadium, now Marvel Stadium, in Melbourne’s Docklands.

The FWO alleged 25 stadium cleaners were underpaid $99,637 between February and June 2017 as a result of being paid unlawfully low flat rates.

The Federal Circuit and Family Court imposed penalties against Quayclean, the stadium’s principal cleaning contractor, subcontractor Ranvel, Ranvel owner Indika Udara Lokubalasuriya, and Harjot Singh, who was a director of Melbourne-based company Lionheart Workforce.

Lionheart and Mr Singh paid 11 cleaners flat hourly rates ranging from $7 to $23, resulting in total underpayments of $75,138.26. The FWO said Lionheart could not be pursued in court because it went into liquidation in September 2019.

Ranvel and Mr Lokubalasuriya paid 14 cleaners a flat rate of $16 per hour, resulting in total underpayments of $24,498.80.

Quayclean was involved as an accessory in most of the underpayment contraventions because the subcontract amounts it paid Ranvel and Lionheart were not sufficient to enable the companies to provide the relevant cleaning services while meeting employees’ minimum Award entitlements.

Judge Caroline Kirton found that all respondents had deliberately contravened workplace laws, noting that Quayclean had admitted knowing the funds it paid Lionheart and Ranvel were insufficient to enable the companies to comply with the cleaning award.

Acting Fair Work Ombudsman Kristen Hannah said the regulator was committed to taking action to address the exploitation of vulnerable workers in supply chains in high-risk industries such as cleaning.

“We welcome the substantial penalties in this case. We conduct thorough investigations of supply chains to gather the evidence we need and we are prepared to take action against multiple levels of supply chains for non-compliant conduct,” Ms Hannah said.

“Workers employed in the cleaning sector are low-paid, often vulnerable migrant workers with limited awareness of their workplace rights. We treat deliberate underpayments of such workers particularly seriously.”

The affected cleaners have been backpaid in full.

In a statement, Quayclean Australia chief executive, Mark Piwkowski, apologised to the affected workers, saying the company had transformed its business operations.

“The investigation made us realise that if our business is to be relevant and sustainable, our only path was to build our own fully employed team across the country,” Mr Piwkowski said.

“Within days of the investigation in September 2017, Quayclean moved to expand its already employed workforce to 100% employed with our first challenge being the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games where 1,200 staff were employed directly to deliver the games. We no longer engage subcontractors because of the risk of underpayment that cannot be controlled.

“Today, Quayclean employs over 5100 full-time, permanent part-time and casual employees who are all employed under the modern award cleaning,” he said.