Wollongong-based telecommunications company, Illawarra Communications, will be facing a series of audits from the Fair Work Ombudsman after underpaying a call centre worker more than $3000.
The ombudsman’s investigation uncovered that the telco had underpaid a worker’s casual loadings, overtime rates and penalty rates for weekend, public holiday and night work during a seven month period in 2015.
The ombudsman said the underpayment was largely the result of the company mistakenly applying rates from an expired state Award, when it should have applied the Contract Call Centres Award.
The underpayment was discovered when Fair Work was asked for assistance from the employee along with seven other employees at the call centre.
The telco has co-operated with the investigation and agreed to back-pay $3098 to the initial employee.
Illawarra Communications has about 20 call centre staff and has agreed to commission a professional audit of its payments to current and former employees dating back to January 2015, and it will rectify any underpayments.
It will also organise specialist workplace relations training for managers, register with the MyAccount service at Fair Work and will display notices about its contraventions.
Fair Work Ombudsman, Natalie James, said the matter illustrates the importance of employers ensuring they take the time to check which Award covers each of their employees and the penalty rates that apply.
