LABOR WILL MOVE TO ESTABLISH WAGE THEFT INQUIRY

All businesses – whether they are a national supermarket chain or a family-owned corner store – must pay their staff properly.

While Woolworths has today come forward and committed to paying its workers what they’re owed, it should not have taken this long to uncover these underpayments.

We also know that many employers don’t come clean. Others have tried to cover up their underpayments – or worse yet have deliberately used wage theft as part of their business model.

For half a decade now Labor has been calling on the Liberals to do something about worker underpayment, whether it occurs as a result of genuine payroll error or deliberate wage theft.

But Scott Morrison does not take wage compliance seriously. And by failing to act on this issue, his Government has sent the message to businesses that they don’t need to take it seriously either.

Labor wants a system in which wage theft is uncovered quickly and workers are repaid swiftly.

In the face of the Government’s inaction, Labor is calling for a wide-ranging parliamentary inquiry into this issue. While previous parliamentary inquiries have examined specific instances or elements of wage theft, this look at the issue as a whole.

It would examine: the reasons for wage and superannuation theft; the cost of wage theft to the economy; the best means of uncovering and deterring such theft; and the taxation treatment of those affected.

We call on the Government to support our motion to establish an inquiry when the Senate returns in November.

The worst thing the Government can do now is persist with its so-called Ensuring Integrity legislation – which will weaken the very institutions dedicated to uncovering wage theft.

WEDNESDAY, 30 OCTOBER 2019