A Queensland cattle and meat processing company has admitted to underpaying its employees at an abattoir and meat processing facility in Brisbane between 2010 and 2022.
The employees include meat workers, cleaners, yard-persons, stockpersons, and store-persons, as well as administrative staff including clerks, procurement and logistics workers, and manufacturing employees, according to a media release from the FWO.
The employer has entered into an Enforceable Undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman.
Under the Enforceable Undertaking the employer is required to back-pay all the underpaid employees by 13 January 2023.
The individual back-payments range from less than $1 to over $134,000.
So far, the company has back-paid nearly $3.28 million to 342 current and former employees.
In addition, the Enforceable Undertaking also mandates the employer to apologise to its employees, engage with an independent expert to review and report to the Fair Work Ombudsman its underpayment ratification process, as well as publish notices to the media, its website, and workplaces on its breaches.
These Enforceable Undertaking measures include conducting, at the company’s own cost, audits of its compliance with workplace laws over the next two years as well as reporting to the Fair Work Ombudsman on the extensive upgrade of its human resources and record keeping systems.
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