Is your payroll ready for the proposed actions of the Federal Government

The current deliberation of the government about Payroll Award Interpretations by businesses has been hung out, displaying their approach to wage theft and Payroll Underpayments and Omissions.

Inzenius, with its comprehensive automated Award Interpretation from the system’s approved Timesheet, helps to protect the company from future errors, omissions and potential prosecutions as envisaged by the government. It achieves this with substantial time and cost savings associated with standard payroll processing.

ThatsInzenius

Herald Sun, Tony Burke Opinion Piece Published on the 31^st August 2023

The following is the full published opinion of Tony Burke – Federal Employment and Workplace Relations Minister. It highlights the government’s intent.

“If a worker steals from the till, it’s a criminal offence. But in many parts of Australia, it’s not if an employer steals from a worker’s pay packet.

It’s time to end this double standard once and for all.

Employers who steal from their workers should face criminal Penalties.

It’s been nearly a decade since the 7-Eleven underpayments story was exposed. That scandal showed that, for some companies, wage theft was part of their business model.

There have been dozens of scandals since, It’s been happening across industries- construction, health care, retail and accommodation – costing workers about $1.56b every year.

Wage theft disproportionately affects vulnerable workers such as women, younger people and migrants.

The previous government did nothing to stop the wage theft epidemic.

It took the liberals and Nationals years to acknowledge there was a problem. Eventually, they did bring in half-hearted legislation – but they voted against their own legislation in the Senate. They tore up their own draft laws because they couldn’t get enough support for their plans to cut workers’ pay and conditions in other ways.

Well, we’ll act.

For a number of months now, the Albanese Labour Government has been consulting with states and territories, employers and unions to develop and design laws that will criminalise wage theft nationwide. Legislation will be introduced in the coming weeks.

Clearly, the current rules and penalties aren’t doing enough to protect workers. We need a strong deterrent. Business owners who knowingly withhold wages should face the harshest penalties.

We do need to acknowledge some businesses inadvertently make an honest mistake, and we are working hard to ensure an appropriate approach for these situations.

We must also ensure new laws do not water down any wage theft laws already put in place by the states. Labour governments in Victoria and Queensland have criminalised wage theft but a national system is needed.

Last year the government passed the Secure Jobs, Better Pay laws to get more people into secure work and to get wages moving again.

This year, we’re introducing laws to close the loopholes that undermine pay and conditions – including wage theft.”

Tony Burke Federal Employment and Workplace Relations Minister.