The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has agreed to pay a record $600,000 and backpay hundreds of employees after underpaying them more than $12 million over six years.
The broadcaster revealed the full extent of its underpayments, first flagged last year, in an enforceable undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman on Friday where it said it had so far backpaid $11.9 million to more than 1800 short-changed casual staff.
The underpayments came about as a result of paying casuals flat rates of pay insufficient to cover enterprise agreement entitlements including overtime, penalty rates and some allowances. In some cases employees were paid less than the minimum hourly rate.
In total, 1,907 ABC employees were underpaid $12 million mostly between October 2012 and February 2019 and as of the end of May it had backpaid 1,828 employees.
Underpayments ranged from $7 to $180,000, with full backpay to occur by July 31.
