Ninety five per cent of businesses in the Melbourne CBD are correctly paying their employees, random audits by the Fair Work Ombudsman have revealed.
The face to face visits to employers were undertaken in recognition of the high concentration of retail businesses in the CBD and potentially high numbers of casual workers.
Fair Work inspectors made site visits to 217 businesses in the city to assess compliance with record keeping and payslip requirements of the Fair Work Act.
Inspectors visited retailers from 50 different industry sub sectors, including clothing, supermarket and grocery, footwear, sports and camping stores.
They found 88 per cent of employers (192) were complying with their payslip and record keeping responsibilities and 84 per cent (183) were compliant with all their obligations.
Ten businesses were found to have made pay rate errors, and more than $20,600 was recouped for 23 employees who had been underpaid. The underpayments ranged from $70 to $10,000.
Inspectors determined that the pay errors were inadvertent mistakes based on a lack of understanding by the employers of their obligations, and they were immediately rectified.
During the consultations, inspectors educated retailers about the range of free tools and resources at the Fair Work Ombudsman’s website www.fairwork.gov.au that have been designed to assist them meet their obligations.
Facebook and Twitter are also used to communicate with employees and employers in the retail sector about their rights and obligations.
Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James says the preference is always to work with businesses to help them put effective policies and procedures in place to achieve compliance.
“We are serious about our job of building knowledgeable and fairer workplaces and don’t insist there is only one way to achieve compliance – education is equally as important as deterrents.”
Further visits to retail stores across the country have started to assess compliance across the industry and ensure employers understand their obligations.
James says the Fair Work Ombudsman has a particular focus on assisting small businesses to understand and meet their obligations to employees.
“Small businesses often don’t have the benefit of in-house human resources and payroll staff, so we place a high priority on assisting them and developing tools and resources to make it easier for them to comply with workplace law,” she said.
