St Peter’s Lutheran College in Brisbane will back-pay staff more than $2 million and has entered into an enforceable undertaking with the FWO.
It self-reported in November 2020, disclosing underpayments of its co-curricular sports staff working as coaches and coordinators at both campuses.
The college believed it could engage the staff as volunteers while paying them lump sums in recognition of their time and expertise. Having received external legal advice that these were employment relationships, the college asked a law firm to conduct an audit and calculate any underpayments and an accounting firm to check the methodology.
The college has admitted it breached a relevant award and enterprise agreement. Contraventions related to minimum rates of pay, casual loading, weekend penalty rates, overtime, vehicle allowances, a failure to apply pay point progression, and breaches of record keeping obligations.
A total of more than $2.46 million, including interest and superannuation, will be back paid to 753 current and former employees who were underpaid between July 2012 and December 2020.
The Paraplegic & Quadriplegic Association of NSW has back paid staff more than $705,000 and entered into an enforceable undertaking with the FWO. The organisation self-reported underpayments in November 2020.
Prompted by a pay query, ParaQuad identified underpayments of a forklift allowance under a collective agreement. Its board then endorsed a comprehensive review of employee entitlements of 1137 current and former staff.
External consultants who conducted the review found minimum pay rates were applied incorrectly for employees covered by various awards and collective agreements.
The employees were underpaid minimum wage rates, annual leave and leave loading pay, casual loading, overtime, and various allowances. ParaQuad also failed to keep all required employee records.
The Creche and Kindergarten Association Limited has back paid staff around $200,000 and entered into an enforceable undertaking with the FWO.
The Creche and Kindergarten Association Limited conducted a self-initiated review of its payroll systems in preparing their upgrade and discovered it had applied an incorrect interpretation of the terms of its enterprise agreement. The company self-reported underpayments in October 2020.
Some part time and casual employees were being paid at ordinary or penalty rates for certain hours that should have been classified as overtime.
The internal review into its underpayments found that 1336 current and former employees were underpaid a total of $209,168 between July 2013 and September 2020.
