A judge has slapped a United Petroleum franchisee with hefty penalties of almost $180,000 for underpaying four migrant workers more than $20,000.
The Federal Circuit and Family Court last week ordered KLM Foods Pty Ltd to pay $135,143 in fines and its sole director Loveleen Gupta an additional $44,078.
The company operated United service stations in the Hobart suburbs of Sandy Bay and Kingston.
An investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) revealed the four workers, who held visas from India and Bangladesh, were paid flat rates between $16 and $23 per hour.
These rates fell well below legal requirements for minimum wages, overtime and penalty rates for weekend, public holiday and afternoon-shift work.
Individual underpayments ranged from $2,597 to $9,574, totalling more than $20,000.
The FWO also found that KLM Foods and Gupta breached the Fair Work Act by forcing one of the workers to make an unlawful cashback payment of $6,353 to the company.
Judge Karl Blake said Gupta had shown no remorse and had not apologised for underpaying his “vulnerable workers”.
His findings note KLM was not ‘financially healthy’ and that any penalty above $50,000 would be “financially crippling”.
Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth Anna Booth said Gupta had deliberately provided workers with falsified pay slips and submitted fraudulent timesheets to the FWO.
“We condemn the underpayments of migrant workers in this case. We also have zero tolerance for unlawful cashback arrangements that attempt to hide underpayments,” she said.
