Underpayments of Wages
PUNISHABLE BY JAIL The Queensland Government last week passed legislation making it a criminal offence for employers to knowingly underpay their staff, with Directors and business owners facing jail time if convicted. This sounds good in theory as no-one should knowingly under pay their staff but the reality is most employers don’t. The majority of underpayment claims are due to human error, payroll errors and the exceedingly confusing and inconsistent pay conditions contained within the modern awards. If the Queensland Government were serious about protecting workers from underpayments, then they should be petitioning for awards and pay conditions to be reviewed and streamlined. So what are the most common reasons behind underpayments and what steps can employers take to protect themselves and their employees?
Classification Levels
Allowances
Are you paying your employees all of the allowances that they are entitled to? Allowances are hard because many of them are not applicable every day or every pay cycle so its easy for employers to miss them when they are. Some of the more common and less common allowances in the Building and Construction General On-site Award are below: • an employee is to be paid an allowance of $17.43 per day for each day worked when the employee starts and finishes work on a construction site • an employee who uses their own vehicle to travel between work sites must be paid an allowance at the rate of $0.78 per kilometre. Employees who are regularly required to compute or estimate quantities of materials in respect of the work performed by other employees must be paid an additional 23.3% of the hourly standard rate per day or part thereof.
It is quite common that employees receive pay increases each year on the basis of the classification level they were first employed at, without their classification levels being reassessed each year. This can include the number of employees they supervise, assuming site supervision responsibility, co-ordinate teams and ensuring the quality of another person’s work.
Did you know that if an employee’s tools are lost or stolen whilst being transported by the employee at the employer’s direction (ie direction to attend site with appropriate tools to complete the work) then the employer is responsible to reimburse the employee to a maximum of $1,862
Employers should review their employee’s tasks, responsibilities and classification levels each year to minimise the risks of underpayments due to classification levels.
Employers should ensure they are aware of what allowances may apply under their relevant award and ensure these are reviewed each pay period to evaluate whether they are applicable that pay period.
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