Employers allegedly required 82 hours of service per week
The Fair Work Ombudsman has secured $37,500 as recompense for a nanny/domestic worker who was allegedly overworked and underpaid by her employers. The case shows the consequences employers face if they “require unreasonable hours” of their staff, the FWO said.
The complainant, who was hired from overseas, had reportedly been asked to work up to 82 hours per week when she was still living with her employers, who were a Sydney-based couple with two children. The nanny was promised a total of more than $12,500 for her 12 months of service, from May 2016 to May 2017.
Calculations under the Miscellaneous Award 2010, however, revealed that the nanny should have received more than $105,000 based on the number of hours rendered. One of the employers told the Federal Court that the worker’s salary did indeed reflect underpayments of base rates and penalty rates, particularly for early-morning and night hours, overtime hours and public holidays.
“The scale of the underpayments in this matter was particularly concerning to the Fair Work Ombudsman. We viewed the employee as a vulnerable worker because she was new to Australia, resided with her employer, and did not know her workplace rights,” FWO Sandra Parker said. The FWO also has an agreement with the Department of Home Affairs where “visa holders can ask for our help without fear of their visa being cancelled”.
Read more: COVID-19: Council lauds Fair Work amendment
“The Fair Work Ombudsman prioritises matters involving vulnerable workers, including migrant workers, and will continue to take court action to ensure employers are held to account. Workers with concerns about their pay, hours of work or entitlements should contact us,” the FWO said.
Apart from “unreasonably” requiring the nanny to work more than 38 hours per week, which was a violation of National Employment Standards, the employers had also purportedly committed annual leave, record-keeping and pay slip breaches.
Justice Nye Perram, who handled the case, ruled that the breach of one of the employers was deliberate since the employer “decided to hire a domestic worker and nanny from overseas and to pay her outside the Australian regulatory framework”.
