Just a day after employer unions were bleating about a ‘return to union power’ with the recent introduction of Julia Gillard’s Fair Work laws, multinational behemoth Toys R Us has been caught out rorting its young workforce.
Sydney-wide raids by officers from the Workplace Ombudsman (a rabid left-wing body set up by John Howard) found that staff are owed several million dollars following systemic underpayment according to today’s Daily Telegraph.
When the staff - on no doubt already abysmal retail wages - are owed several million dollars, you know the rort must have been pretty big.
The Workplace Ombudsman also found other humiliating workplace practices being perpetrated on young staff.
Like subjecting them to mandatory bag checks when leaving the store and a holidays ban for four months a year.
It’s a far cry from the predictions of big business on Tuesday. Way back then the big end of town’s mouthpiece, The Australian, was screaming about the country’s entry into a new “dangerous’ union era”.
The Oz told us the business community would go mental if, shock horror, there was a return to industry-wide union bargaining, or, even bigger shock horror, if at the end of a bargaining period they had to abide by an “umpire’s decision”.
Liberal die-hards in parliament, like Alby Shultz, who haven’t got the message that the electorate hates WorkChoices and the era of boss lock-outs, were threatening to cross the floor and vote against their own party.
Shultz was apparently miffed that unions might get to inspect wage records of non-union employees.
One can only wonder if ripped off Toys R Us workers are worried about the Workplace Ombudsman looking at their wage records if it means they are going to receive the pay they are entitled to.
Of course, at the end of the day the question has to be asked - if big well-known retailers can rip off staff and are only reined in by government action who else is ripping off their vulnerable teenage employees?
Or am I just getting caught up in this new “dangerous union era”?
