FWO

CBA should pay a penalty of $12.8 million -- close to the maximum penalty the court can impose on the bank -- for underpaying its staff to the tune of $16.4 million, a judge has heard.

A court has found the managing director of teahouse franchise Chatime liable for the underpayment of staff, despite accepting that he believed the company's wage system was not unlawful.

Retailer Best & Less will back-pay staff over $5.2 million as part of an undertaking to the Fair Work Ombudsman, after an internal review found salaried managers were not paid enough to cover their entitlements.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has revealed that its files were among those exposed in a cyberattack against law firm HWL Ebsworth.

Casino operator Crown Resorts has agreed to backpay employees more than $1.2 million, after the company notified the Fair Work Ombudsman that it had underpaid workers at its Melbourne and Perth locations for almost six years. 

On the first day of trial in parallel class actions and regulatory proceedings, the Fair Work Ombudsman panned the payment systems adopted by Woolworths and Coles for salaried managers, saying they were “entirely foreign” to the industrial award and that the supermarket giants had “no meaningful proper records” for overtime. 

A judge has urged the Fair Work Ombudsman to act quickly after it told the court it accidentally undervalued claimed underpayments in a case against the owner of Rebel Sport, the regulator’s first case against a holding company for alleged wrongdoing by its subsidiaries.

The University of Technology Sydney will backpay staff more than $4.4 million, plus $1.3 million in superannuation and interest, after agreeing to an enforceable undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman.