DEWR is consulting on potential changes to the Fair Entitlements Guarantee, after finding an increasing number of companies are deliberately using the scheme, designed as a "last resort", to avoid their obligations.
The FWO has further tightened the screws on franchisors after the Federal Court agreed that it fell to Bakers Delight to disprove that it is liable for half of a liquidated franchisee's alleged underpayments of more than $1.2 million.
The Federal Court has imposed a record penalty on a sushi restaurant chain to "disabuse" employers of the notion that penalties for underpayments are "an acceptable cost of doing business" and recommended that the Fair Work Ombudsman refer its chief executive's potential flouting of tax and migration laws to the ATO, Department of Home Affairs and ASIC.
A tribunal has refused to extend time for a worker's three-months-late FEG claim but expressed its "sympathy" for the COVID-19 "chaos" and her employer's delayed notification of her entitlements that led to her late application.
An accountancy firm and its principal must pay penalties totalling almost $70,000 for failing to comply with FWO notices to produce documents linked to to its client's "grossly inadequate" employee record-keeping.
The High Court has this afternoon declined to hear DEWR's challenge to a ruling that limits funds available to pay employee entitlements when a company goes under.
The FWO is prosecuting franchisor Bakers Delight for failing to prevent its franchisees from underpaying workers, after the head office discovered the wage theft and failed to address it.
Despite warning of an "unbounded period" of entitlement, DEWR has failed to overturn an AAT finding that a real estate salesperson is eligible for FEG payments reflecting sales commissions that did not fall due until properties settled after the 13-week statutory window.
A long-serving former employee of a company that deliberately restructured to offload severance obligations onto the publicly-funded FEG scheme has had his redundancy payout substantially increased, after the AAT ruled that a "grand chapel" deal with the AMWU "grandfathered" generous provisions in an earlier enterprise agreement.
A former economics professor's troubled relationship with workplace laws has continued, after a court accepted that he "actively" managed an underpaying grocery store previously fined for similar breaches.
