1
Week 11, Semester 1, 2018
woroni VOL. 68, Issue 06. Week 11, Semester 1, 2018
PAGE 17 Skin deep "I had run out of ways to compare my own expereinces with a mere metaphor"
PAGE 38 Interview with Dr. Alex Martinis Roe "I think teaching aesthetics and Politics together need to start earlier"
PAGE 42 I hate You "It is often hard to see people with power over you as tangible beings"
PAGE 47 AMBER "I always think of you. We haven't Spoken in years"
ANU'S SUMO SALAD HAS BEEN UNDERPAYING ITS WORKERS FOR YEARS Text: Max Koslowski Graphic: Sophie Bear Jessica Rombouts first considered that the Sumo Salad franchise she worked for might not be following the rules when her boss handed her an envelope of cash and told her she was going to be paid a “training wage” of $15 per hour. That was more than eight dollars less than she was owed under her casual award rate, but Rombouts desperately needed the money so she didn’t challenge it. For years, two Sumo Salad storefronts in Canberra – one at the Australian National University and another in Canberra City – have paid their workers as little as half of what they’re owed, and have failed to pay penalty rates, potentially robbing workers of thousands of dollars in unpaid wages. Rombouts had just moved to a new city, started college, and was beginning her
first year of university when she nabbed a job at Sumo Salad. “I was desperate for a job,” Rombouts explained, “and it was only down the road from where I lived.” And when they started paying her $15 per hour in cash, the young uni student didn’t know what to do. “I didn’t really argue with it because I really needed the job.”
part-time employee, meaning she did not get the higher wage she would have received as a casual. Payslips seen by Woroni show that even here, she was paid only $17.70 per hour, when the award rate for the lowest level of part-time adult fast food employee is $20.08 per hour. She still didn’t receive penalty rates.
Even when the store hired a new manager at the end of 2016, Rombouts was still underpaid.
And her fellow employees were even worse off. One current employee told Woroni that for the first five months of her employment, she was told she was in a “training period”, and was paid around $12 or $13 per hour as a result. Another employee told Woroni she was a trainee, on the same pay, for six weeks. Both workers wished to remain anonymous because they were worried about their employment being terminated.
The Sumo Salad franchise got her to sign a contract that said she was a
Other employees often weren’t even given contracts to sign and would
At first, Rombouts says, the franchisee didn’t even give her a contract to sign. And when Rombouts asked to be paid penalty rates on the weekend, as she was legally entitled to, her boss refused.
sometimes be given as little as six hours of work in a fortnight. And even once Rombouts had left her job at Sumo Salad, the troubles continued. She realised that she had not been paid superannuation throughout her employment, and that she hadn’t been paid the annual leave she was owed as a part-time employee. When she asked her boss about overdue payments “he explained that I did not have a super account connected to Sumo Salad”, despite super contributions being included in her payslip. “How did [the manager] not know I was meant to have super, when he owns so many businesses?” Rombouts asked. Rombouts did ultimately receive both her superannuation and annual leave,
Continued on page five...