Via the ABC:
South Australia’s largest private employer, convenience store chain OTR, has been accused of wage theft that could amount to $70 million in underpayments to thousands of employees.
A class action on behalf of 1,050 workers against Shahin Enterprises, owner of the chain also known as On The Run, has been lodged with the Federal Court on Wednesday.
Adero Law, representing the workers, accuses the company of failing to pay overtime, underpaying staff and misusing its traineeship program as a method to reduce workers’ pay.
It estimates more than 8,000 current or former employees of the chain are eligible to join the class action and claims Shahin Enterprises could be liable to pay back between $50 million and $70 million in unpaid wages and entitlements.
The allegations, which date back to 2014 and span across all 145 OTR stores in South Australia, involve eight different wage minimisation tactics that allegedly enabled Shahin Enterprises to underpay its staff.
In a statement to the ABC, a spokesperson for OTR said while the company would correct payment errors “brought to its attention”, it had “no choice but to defend the case”.
One of the lead claimants is Paul Young, who worked at an OTR service station at Parafield, north of Adelaide, between 2013 and 2019.
Mr Young started out on a traineeship program, and would remain under that pay bracket until 2015.
Adero Law claims at least 6,000 OTR workers across South Australia were put on similar programs by the company, and allegedly received $3 an hour less than they were entitled to.
Mr Young said OTR was initially a good company and provided shifts that suited his needs as a single father of two children with disabilities.
But, by the end of 2018, things had changed.
“More expected, more work placed onto me and nothing for it. Barely even a thank you.”
Mr Young alleges he was required to work overtime before and after his shifts, and couldn’t take allocated meal breaks.
“I got told, that’s life. That’s the way it is, it’s the nature of the industry,” he said.
“They tend to forget I’d been in the industry a long time and worked for a number of different companies. It’s not the way it worked with those companies.”
He said he eventually became worn down by the role.
“I was just literally tired,” he said.
“It was time for me to give up and concentrate on looking after my children.”
Like other applicants, Mr Young also alleges pay was deducted from his salary to cover uniform costs and police checks, despite OTR’s policy of reimbursing workers for these costs upon termination of their employment.
‘Voluntary overtime’ a routine tactic
Mr Young, 63, said he was hopeful the class action would be successful.
“If they’ve done it to me, how many others have they done it to?” he said.
“You treat your staff properly, you pay them accordingly and you make your profit that way.
“If it’s a chance for me to recoup a little bit of what I should have been paid in the first place, yeah, I think it’s fair.”
Another applicant, Aaron Furnell, said he was also unfairly classed as a trainee and not properly paid for a total of 746 hours of overtime.
Mr Furnell alleges he was asked by his employer at OTR to work “voluntary overtime”.
Lawyers working on the case said the tactic was routinely used by the company to minimise wages.
They said workers were instructed by OTR to sign a “voluntary overtime” form on the commencement of their employment, which stated any overtime they worked was voluntary and as such paid at their respective ordinary rates of pay.
But it is alleged the company would then require employees to work overtime in line with its own staffing requirements, which included shifts on public holidays.
In 2015, the ABC’s 7.30 program revealed former employees’ allegations that OTR was running a sham training program, designed to keep wages low.
The report drew the attention of the State Government and enquiries were made with the company.
At the time, OTR said it paid employees fairly and legally, and that the Fair Work Ombudsman had performed two audits on the company.
In a statement provided on Wednesday, an OTR spokesperson said it was one of “many retailers targeted” by Adero.
“In the circumstances, OTR has no choice but to defend the case,” the spokesperson said.
“Anyone in retail will agree that the industrial system in Australia is incredibly complex.
“The challenges of managing a 24/7 business, with a large workforce, across multiple sites and industrial instruments means that mistakes are always possible, which is why businesses, including OTR, have processes in place to investigate and fix any potential issues raised.
The spokesperson also said OTR wanted to “reassure all staff” that processes were in place to “validate and fix any wage discrepancies raised by current or former employees”.
‘Unprecedented’ underpayment of workers
In March, the Federal Court upheld a separate decision by South Australia’s Employment Tribunal to award $2,342 to an OTR employee who had been underpaid.
Adero Law previously began looking into possible wage theft through the company’s traineeship program, which it said highlighted a pattern of “serial offending”.
Lawyer Kellie Pledger, who spearheaded the investigation, said Peregrine Corporation, a parent company of OTR, has been involved in several claims at the tribunal.
“The common feature among sophisticated businesses subject to recent wage scandals is that they have systemically underpaid employees.
“No-one is forcing employers to pay rock bottom rates that leave no room for error.”
The law firm said it surveyed more than 1,000 workers from the OTR chain, all of whom allege they had not been paid their lawful entitlements.
“The level of underpayment does differ between modest sums to very egregious sums,” Rory Markham, another Adero lawyer, said.
“We think that the intention behind it was to actually dramatically lower the wage cost and it wasn’t an accident.
Mr Markham said workers were not aware of their rights.
“Worse still, in the South Australian context, we do have a very vulnerable workforce that probably needed greater protection [by the] State Government and the federal regulator,” he said.
Mr Markham said OTR’s pattern of behaviour was a “systemic and egregious” breach of the Fair Work Act — but he said he was not surprised.
“How a company can get away with this, unfortunately, is not unusual,” he said.
“The issue here has been to settle quickly and otherwise gag employees … and that kind of culture needs to stop.”
Convenience stores. Hoocoodnaode.
Let’s face it. There is only one enabler of this debacle. Mass immigration, temporary workers and international students which has drawn in locals as well. All of them exploited together.
This is the bald-faced hypocrisy of the Fake Left exposed. Their favored system destroys the rights and pricing power of workers across the board.
It won’t end until the cheap foreign labour scam is shut down.
