Central Coast employees at aged and veteran services organisation RSL LifeCare Limited are among the 3,591 staff across NSW and ACT who will be back-paid more than $5.1M following an investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman.
Underpaid employees were engaged in nursing and management roles at aged care facilities and in home-care programs.
RSL LifeCare has entered into an Enforceable Undertaking (EU) with the Fair Work Ombudsman to back-pay both past and present employees, including superannuation and interest, with payments ranging from less than $1 to more than $76,000.
A small amount of entitlements are still owing to workers who RSL LifeCare hasn’t yet located.
Outstanding underpayments are to be rectified by April 2023.
The not-for-profit organisation, which is affiliated with RSL NSW, self-reported its non-compliance to the Fair Work Ombudsman in 2021 after becoming aware of underpayments when it conducted a self-initiated review during its transition to a new human resources and payroll system.
The underpayments were caused by RSL LifeCare making fundamental payroll and rostering system errors, including incorrect system set up and incorrect pay rules being entered.
As a result, between 2010 and 2021, RSL LifeCare failed to pay overtime rates in a range of situations, such as when employees did not have sufficient breaks between shifts and when part-time employees performed work on rostered days off but had otherwise worked less than 76 hours in a fortnight.
Another significant cause of the underpayments was RSL LifeCare’s failure to provide shift workers with an extra week of annual leave they were entitled to. Some employees were also underpaid weekend penalty rates.
Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker said RSL LifeCare had co-operated and demonstrated a strong commitment to rectifying underpayments, including devoting significant resources to engaging independent experts to oversee its rectification.
“Under the Enforceable Undertaking, RSL LifeCare has committed to implementing stringent measures to ensure workers are paid correctly.
“These measures include engaging, at the company’s own cost, audits of its compliance with workplace laws over the next two years,” Parker said.
Under the Enforceable Undertaking, RSL LifeCare is also required to provide the Fair Work Ombudsman with evidence of systems and processes it has put in place to ensure future compliance, commission an independent organisation to operate a Hotline for employees to enquire about their wages and entitlements, and commission workplace relations training for human resources, payroll and rostering staff.
Source:
Fair Work Ombudsman