The underpayment of wages found by the Fair Work Ombudsman by disability services provider, Activ Foundation Inc. (Activ) will lead to it back paying employees in Western Australia a total of $13.6 million after breaching Australia’s workplace laws.
Activ, which is a registered Australian Disability Enterprise, has entered into a Court-Enforceable Undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman after self-disclosing that it underpaid 1,695 current and former employees, in diverse roles such as manufacturing, property maintenance, landscaping and product packaging.
The affected workers were all people with a disability and were covered by a pay structure set out in the Supported Employment Services Award 2010 that allows employees to receive a rate of pay based on their capacity to perform the work.
The significant underpayments occurred between December 2011 and December 2017 and were identified after the company discovered that changes it made to broaden the application of the tool used to determine its employees’ rate of pay, contravened the Award.
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