The Fair Work Ombudsman has put Domino’s Pizza Enterprises on notice and highlighted systemic issues in the network after finding breaches of workplace law across 19 stores.
Twenty Domino’s employees were found to have been underpaid a total of $1978 during a one-month period as part of a company wide audit, with inspectors interviewing 144 Domino’s workers and analysing 874 employee records across 33 stores.
“While Domino’s have made some improvements to their processes, they should be closely monitoring their stores to ensure employees are being paid correctly,” Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker said.
“We expect better from a major network like Domino’s – it should not be up to the Fair Work Ombudsman to find and alert businesses to the systemic issues identified.”
Seventeen formal cautions were issued, meaning future non-compliance could result in the FWO seeking financial penalties, while four compliance notices were issued to detail breaches of workplace laws and how the company can resolve them.
Domino’s Australia chief executive Nick Knight said the business has cooperated fully with the FWO’s investigation, and has been making efforts to ensure staff are paid correctly.
“We understand that it’s our responsibility to ensure our corporate stores are compliant and that we train and educate franchisees to ensure they’re doing right 100 percent of the time,” Knight said.
“Our goal is to ensure team members receive their correct entitlements at all times and, where this has not been the case as revealed by FWO’s investigation, we will ensure any wages underpayments are rectified as quickly as possible.”
Parker noted the FWO will continue to monitor the Domino’s network, and recommends the business immediately commences a review of pay and entitlements for its employees across both franchisor and franchisee owned stores.
Domino’s is the latest in a recent string of retailers to unintentionally underpay staff, including Super Retail Group and Lush.
National Retailers Association chief executive Dominique Lamb said the complexity of the Modern Retail Award is making the issue more common.
“One underpayment is too many, and that’s why the NRA is a very strong advocate for greater education for employers, to ensure that honest mistakes are reduced and also for employees so that the small number of unscrupulous employers have less ability to get away with unlawful treatment of their staff,” Lamb said.
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