Seasonal workers from Vanuatu were given two different pay rates
A labour hire company in Brisbane has been ordered to pay over $50,000 after Fair Work inspectors discovered it had underpaid seasonal workers.
Agri Labour Australia was penalised for failing to remunerate a group of 19 seasonal workers from Vanuatu, who were hired for four months to harvest tomatoes for MCG Fresh Produce, a farm in northern Victoria.
Agri Labour, which provides agricultural businesses with manpower, had initially agreed to pay labourers based on their individual harvest, not the total harvest of the group, ABC News reported.
Fair Work investigators, however, found a number of labourers were given a ‘group piecework rate’ instead. Payment for labourers harvesting cherry tomatoes was calculated based on individual productivity, while remuneration for those picking roma tomatoes was based on group productivity.
Agri Labour said it had no log of the actual hours of work rendered by the tomato pickers.
The labour hire company also admitted its piecework agreement with those harvesting roma tomatoes failed to specify that the labourers were meant to work as a team and that they would only receive an equal percentage of the group’s pay.
Agri Labour’s managing director Casey Brown said the company has rectified the discrepancies in wages after the issue was discovered, and has paid workers their due “long before” the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) issued an order.
“Since then we’ve been working with the Ombudsman to ensure that our workers receive their full entitlements and we are happy to make this extra top up payment to achieve that goal,” Brown said.
FWO Sandra Parker said the commission’s Harvest Trail Inquiry found “widespread breaches of the Fair Work Act” in the horticultural industry, but that Agri Labour has committed to “extensive measures aimed at sustained workplace compliance.”
“[We] will scrutinise their work practices for the next two years,” the Ombudsman said.
