Tasmania's largest aged care operator is paying almost $7 million to underpaid staff after reporting its own breaches to the Fair Work Ombudsman.
Southern Cross Care (Tasmania) conducted a review after discovering payroll and HR errors in its own internal systems, and reported the findings of that review to the Ombudsman in August 2021.
The two parties signed an enforceable undertaking (EU) that will see Southern Cross Care back-pay 1708 staff a total of $6.87 million – $5,806,756 in unpaid wages and entitlements, plus a further $313,591 in superannuation and $754,181 in interest.
Most of those staff have already been repaid, but under the EU the remainder have to be reimbursed by the end of September.
While the average back-payment is a little over $4000, six employees were underpaid more than $100,000, some of which were owed over $220,000.
At the other end of the scale, some back-payments were less than $1.
The Fair Work Ombudsman said most of the affected workers were part-time employees, although some on full-time and casual agreements were also impacted.
"The errors included failing to have agreements in place with part-time staff to work additional hours at ordinary rates of pay," the Ombudsman said in a statement.
"This meant that employees were entitled to – but not paid for – overtime for these additional hours.
"Southern Cross Care (Tasmania) also failed to recognise that shift workers without written agreements were entitled to be paid from the start of their first shift to the end of their final shift each day, rather than just the hours worked during the separate shifts.
"The underpaid employees performed work in locations across Tasmania including Hobart, Launceston, Somerset and Low Head. Underpayments occurred between 2015 and 2022."
Most of the breaches, which occurred between 2015 and 2022, related to unpaid overtime entitlements.
