FWO recovers half a billion dollars in wages

The figures were released by Deputy Fair Work Ombudsman – policy and communication Kristen Hannah at the Policy-Influence-Reform (PIR) conference in Canberra on Monday (8 August).

“The Fair Work Ombudsman’s strengthened compliance and enforcement approach has seen another record amount of back-paid wages for Australian workers in the last financial year,” Ms Hannah said.

“This is a great result for the workers who have been reunited with their withheld wages, and also for the businesses that pay correctly and are no longer at a disadvantage as a result.”

More than half of the recoveries — almost $279 million — came from large corporate employers.

“This is the result of the sustained hard work that our agency has done to create an environment that encourages large corporates to prioritise compliance,” Ms Hannah said.

The Fair Work Ombudsman currently has about 50 investigations underway into large corporates that have self-reported underpayments, including some of Australia’s largest companies.

In 2021–22, the federal workplace regulator filed a record 137 litigations, part of efforts to hold to account employers who had allegedly breached workplace laws. This was an almost doubling of the number of new matters put into court the year before.

New litigations included those against the Commonwealth Bank and CommSec, and Coles Supermarkets, which are ongoing.

The Fair Work Ombudsman also continued its work to assist small businesses, including by providing more than 1,200 written pieces of tailored technical advice to small-business employers through its Employer Advisory Service.

Ms Hannah also said there had been 22.6 million hits on the FairWork website from people looking for information, tools and resources about workplace relations rights and obligations.