Jamileh Hargreaves has been underpaid by employers ‘more times than she count’ during her 14-year career in hospitality.
Working as a barista and server, for many years Ms Hargreaves was paid below the minimum wage, denied penalty rates, and received no superannuation contribution.
She is not alone in her experiences.
An estimated 79 per cent of Victorian hospitality employers did not comply with the national award wage system from 2013 to 2016.
A nationwide audit of 1217 businesses by the Fair Work Ombudsman in 2018, found hospitality to be the least compliant industry with workplace laws.
82 per cent of hospitality workers surveyed last year by the industry union Hospo Voice, reported experiences of wage theft in a current or previous job.
Young and migrant workers are often the most vulnerable to underpayment.
Up to 50 per cent of migrant workers in Australia are underpaid, according to estimates from the National Temporary Migrant Work Survey.
Two out of five participants reported their lowest paid job being in food service, a greater proportion than any other industry.
Migrant workers are disproportionately represented in the work of the FWO.
For example, despite making up only 7 per cent of the Australian workforce migrant workers accounted for 44 per cent of litigations initiated in 2019-2020.
2019-2020 representation of migrant workers in FWO reports
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Victoria became the first state to criminalize wage theft on July 1, 2021.
Prior to criminalization, the Fair Work Ombudsman was the primary body to investigate and enforce civil penalties under the Fair Work Act 2009.
Unfortunately, this was often not enough to deter employers from unlawful conduct.
In 2018, the FWO reported that almost 1 in 4 employers continue to engage in underpayment after being audited, and the National Compliance Monitoring report showed similar results.
Results of FWO National Compliance Monitoring report
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The new laws mean wage theft offenders risk up to 10 years imprisonment or fines of almost $200,000 for individuals and almost $1 million for companies.
The Victorian Government is hopeful that the harsher punishments and development of the Wage Inspectorate will be effective in deterrence.
Ms Hargreaves believes that the union presence of Hospo Voice and the new laws are shifting the culture of hospitality and what was once ‘industry standard’.
“The culture of hospitality used to be to pay people as little as possible, exploit them as much as you can and if they say anything, fire them and replace them with somebody else," she said.
“If you create a culture where you can stand up and ask for better conditions, it takes out the individual situation where you’re getting intimidated into accepting less."
Ms Hargreaves hopes that other states will follow Victoria’s lead and that wage theft will become a crime nationwide.
