After a wages stoush between burger company Grill’d and a disgruntled former staff member made headlines on the weekend, Boost Juice employee Liv Conway decided to check her award entitlements.
She was suprised to see she should earn $18.62 per hour under the Fast Food Industry Award (2010), a significant increase on the $17.80 she currently receives.
But this wasn’t her only discovery. For the almost three years she has worked at Boost she has also been entitled to weekend penalty rates that would see her 10 dollars better off for every hour worked on a Sunday.
She says almost all of her colleagues are getting the same raw deal.
“I know for a fact that pretty much all of us are getting underpaid,” Ms Conway said.
The store she works in is owned by a franchisee, who declined to comment to City Journal for this story.
Ms Conway has decided to take her case to the Fair Work Ombudsman, although she said she fears her boss may “unofficially fire” her in retaliation by giving her no shifts.
Ms Conway is employed on a part-time contract, but says she receives none of the job security benefits associated with this type of work.
According to the Fair Work Ombudsman, part-time employees are distinguished from casual employees by a “regular pattern of work”. Casual employees are entitled to extra hourly pay to compensate for their lack of job security.
Ms Conway said she is working as a casual on a part-time wage. Her hours can vary “from zero hours one week to 30 the next week”.
A spokeswoman for the company that owns Boost, Retail Zoo, said the company is passionate about ensuring its young workers are not exploited and have set up an HR hotline for employees.
“We know that young people may not always be fully aware of their rights and can be quite vulnerable, so it’s always been incredibly important to us at Boost to ensure that we have systems in place to protect them and ensure they receive all their entitlements,” she said.
However, Ms. Conway says she found Retail Zoo “unhelpful” when she contacted them to find information about her award wage entitlements.
A spokesman for the Fair Work Ombudsman said the organisation “treats underpayments of young workers very seriously, because they can be vulnerable if they are not fully aware of their workplace rights or are reluctant to complain”.
The spokesman said the best defence against being underpaid or treated unfairly at work is being aware of workplace rights.
