By Oliver Lees
As a respected member of the Sunbury employment scene, Jade McTavish is fed up with the amount of workers that have been subject to wage theft and poor working conditions from employers.
“I’m over dodgy employers, it’s the same as when I was working in Sunbury. Years later, people are still dealing with the same employers that are paying cash in hand or paying below minimum wage,” Ms McTavish
Ms McTavish is the admin of the Sunbury & Surrounds Local Jobs Facebook group, where 19,000 members, made up of local job seekers and employers, can share and apply for job vacancies.
She said on a daily basis she is having to deny people wishing to post job applications on the page due to them offering insufficient wages.
“I’ve had four people complain to me about the same employer,” she said.
“Even today, someone posted online asking for the best places to go for breakfast and I had to comment saying that actually four of the places people had recommended were businesses that pay staff illegally.”
After she decided to put a direct call out into the jobs group to get a sense of how widespread the issue was, Ms McTavish said at least 40 people had replied with stories of how they were mistreated at work within the space of a month.
One Hume resident, who preferred to stay anonymous, described her husband’s experience working as a delivery driver in Sunbury.
“He was starting at like one, two or three in the morning, and they weren’t paying any penalty rates,” she said.
“He spoke with Fair Work and they told him he was being underpaid. Then he brought it up with his employers, and they told him he was wrong.”
According to the Fair Work Commission, workers are entitled to specific penalty rates for night shift work that would contribute to their overall pay.
After speaking further with Fair Work, her husband worked out he was owed $5000 in wages.
The employer finally agreed, but only to pay the amount at $50 a week over several months.
“He said no, and eventually they did pay what he was entitled to, but it was massively stressful and eventually he just quit.”
Another worker, who was employed at a fast food chain in Sunbury in 2018, was made to work night shifts without proper training.
“I had never done it before. It was very busy, and when I asked for help they just gave me a rough explanation and got very frustrated with me,” she said.
“I had no idea what I was doing. At the end, when I thought it was done, they walked around and would tell me I had to stay overtime to finish.
“Starting work as an 18-year-old, I was expecting to be welcomed and taught what working as an adult in the workplace is like.
“It made me think, am I going to be dealing with this for the rest of my life?”
Ms McTavish said that overwhelmingly this was happening within the hospitality industry.
United Workers Union Hospo Voice coordinator Tim Petterson said issues such as these are “rife”.
“More than 80 percent of workers we’ve surveyed have experienced some form of wage theft,” Mr Petterson said.
Me Petterson said it was crucial that workers seek assistance in standing up to unfair workplace conditions.
“It can be tricky to stand up for your rights when you can be deleted from the roster in less than a second,” he said.
“That’s why union members have fought hard to make wage theft a crime in Victoria, which means bosses that steal wages now face up to ten years in jail.”
The United Workers Union has created a portal so that hospitality workers can anonymously report their experiences.
Details: fairplate.org.au
