Jan 28 2018
7-Eleven Revelation of Worker Exploitation, Victimization and Gross Underpayment
Australia’s one of the renowned convenient stores 7-eleven owned by Russell Withers and Beverley Barlow, has been busted for intentionally underpaying workers combining to $19,937 (Sivaraman and Turner 2016). The Federal Circuit Court has imposed on Jim Chien-Ching, the former Franchisee of the store, penalty of $28,000alongwith his company JS Top Pty Ltd to pay $140,000 for deliberately disregarding law. As far as evidence suggest, Mr Chang had willingly concealed the actual amount that was being paid to an employee and inaccurately elaborated an amount of $25 or $30 per hour in order to hoodwink the officials. The penalties that are now hanging like an apparition are only evidences of how employment exploitation and unlawful labor utilization will not be permitted in the country.
According to sources, the Fels wage fairness panel is currently looking into employee manipulation, tampering with data and inadequate pay(Vice, 2018). On an average, the workers were paid $23, 000 less, each. Jude Jarrett further added that the act was committed in order to inflate company’s profit and dismissed a case of inadequate cash flow. The claims dates back to 2013-2014 and since then the company had been reportedly amassing 57% of the gross profit.
Over the few months, The Fels Wage Fairness panel has recorded 2,169 issues regarding underpayment regarding approximately 60% stores. 7-eleven allegedly made use of force and cohesion by threatening to report the workers to the immigration department if they commit any act of grievances. Apart from 7-eleven, 50 different stores spanning across the country were raided by Fels Wage Fairness Panel and seized documents and rosters detect possibilities of employee deception.
According to sources, the workers were paid for 20 hours even after they provided labor for 40 hours, thereby exploiting and unlawfully retaining their money. Several media spokesperson although have criticized 7-elevenwage fraud, citing that it would be practically disastrous for any company to rip benefits without swindling the employees. An insider, who wishes to remain anonymous, has commented that for years the company has produced surplus profit based on a system of slavery and deceit. Siobhan Hennessy, from Deloitte has commented that the workers faced systematic intimidation, fraud and cunning in their workplace. An immigrant was also physically violated while protesting against underpayment claim.
In regard to this, the financial discrepancy of hundreds of 7-Eleven stores has come to the forefront. Consequently, 7-Eleven has agreed to pay up to $25 million of wage fraud which could further sum up to $30 million if the claims exceed the former amount. However, on exceeding $30 million the amount will be divided in between the franchises and head office.Four Corners and Fairfax Media as accumulated documents which clearly indicates that the head-office only reviewed the payroll compliance after media started taking action against the business model and wage fraud of 7-Eleven.
The Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James added about the possibilities of taking further legal actions against the culprits of 7-Eleven. The government has vowed to formulate effective provisions for the head offices to regulate unlawful employee exploitation by their franchises. Famous personalities like Michaelia Cash, has commented about the lapse administration that permits systemic underpayment of the employees and rampant practice of extracting money from employees using manipulation or intimidation. The 7-Eleven wage scam has only pointed towards the dire need of an active collaboration on the part of the parliament to incorporate the Coalition’s steps to execute penalties for employers exploiting their workforce.The degraded ethical standard which has zero respect for the culture of compliance has only proliferated corporate scandals and psychological torture of the workforce. The 7-Eleven story is a story of leadership failure where the management fails to maintain a system that hardly yields profits under the compliance of law and order.
Jan 28 2018
The Uncertainties of an Immigrant Career under the Clutches of 7-Eleven
The 7-Eleven which is jointly owned by Russell Withers and his sister Beverley Barlow as well as their spouses. The underpayment scandal has brought to the surface the issue of immigrant workers whose international student visas are now under scrutiny as commented by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton (Thornthwaite, 2017). The burning issue has made intellectuals to consider how the workers hailing from third-world countries are exploited with little possibilities of staging protest. It is mainly because they are in perpetual fear of loss of employment and immigrant status franchises like 7-Eleven verbally intimidate the workers who in some case were even threatened with immediate deportation and financial penalties.
At this juncture Mr. Dutton has assured that the students will be spared from further harassment or pester if they make a fair deal of cooperating with the Fair Work Ombudsman, responsible for peeling the mask of Mr. Chang for amassing workers’ money. They were also asked to comply with the rule of not providing labor beyond the stipulated 20 hours a week (Karp, 2018). The scandal according to Australian Human Rights Commission has provided a platform to address the grievances of these immigrant workers who are made vulnerable and has also commented on the lack of response by the government.
7-Eleven has propelled around 4000 workers to voice their claims of injustice that they have faced in their workplace. Insiders have come up to provide the media with their version of the story and it is their stern belief that the head office is not being strategically blind to the entire affair but they are hardly committing to anything that would put a halt to the systemic exploitation of their workforce (Mantouvalou, 2015). This is primarily because of the profit that they are incurring each year on a system based on slavery and forced labor. At the crux of the matter is the fact that many third world country students are crouching in front of their masters in order to afford maybe a luxury cup of coffee which in turn have allowed 7-Eleven to function upon a flawed business model which only allowed for the scope of company’s profit at the expense of the rights and welfare of workers (Perrin, 2015).According to the lawyers of Maurice Blackburn, one of the employees worked for 685 hours in order to earn a mere stipend of $325 stretching over a two-month period.
According to SBS reports, around 110 immigrated students are now being paid a compensation of estimated $2.8 million, however, there were 20,000 people in total deserving the compensation. Furthermore a percentage of workers who have been working with 7-Eleven are now scared of being personally identified while making their claim. This emphasizes on the vulnerability that they are exposed to due to their immigration status (Vettori, 2016).
Critics have identified that 7-Eleven has shaken the very foundation of compliance culture which revolves round codes of conduct and ethical policies. When 7-Eleven took initiatives to deal with employee grievances it was too late and the issue had already come undermedia speculation and public bruising (“Everything We Know So Far About 7-Eleven Australia’s Wage Fraud Scandal”, 2018). The Human Rights Commission had sympathized with the immigrants who are documented of having paid only $10 an hour which is insignificant when compared to the stipulated pay of $14 which 7-Eleven has flouted rampantly.
The whole scandal has called for an active collaboration of 7-Eleven with Fair Work Ombudsman in order to repay the workers and improve its old and tattered practices. The immigrant workers’ faith in the law and operation of Australian government has been re-established after legal measures were taken against mine of the 7-Eleven operators since 2009 reassuring the workers the validity of their basic rights in a land far away from their home country. The capitalistic exploitation shows one of the many instances of how the franchises function and commit to acts of deception way beyond wage fraudulence and blackmailing.
References
Fraser, M., 2016. Investigating 7-Eleven: Who are the real bad guys?.Griffith Journal of Law & Human Dignity, 4(2). Retrieved from: https://griffithlawjournal.org/index.php/gjlhd/article/view/836
Freedland, M., Bogg, A., Cabrelli, D., Collins, H., Countouris, N., Davies, A.C.L., Deakin, S. and Prassl, J. eds., 2016. The contract of employment. Oxford University Press.
Karp, P. (2018). 7-Eleven workers beaten and forced to pay back wages, Senate inquiry hears. the Guardian. Retrieved 29 January 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/05/7-eleven-workers-beaten-and-forced-to-pay-back-wages-senate-inquiry-hears
Schwenken, H., 2017. “Domestic Slavery” versus “Workers Rights”: Political Mobilizations ofMigrant Domestic Workers in the European Union. Retrieved from https://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt5759t7fw/qt5759t7fw.pdf
Sivaraman, G. and Turner, P., 2016. The 7-Eleven wages scandal: The need for law reform. Precedent (Sydney, NSW), (135), p.53. Retrieved from https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=334423012367770;res=IELAPA
Thornthwaite, L., 2017. Australia’s wage theft crisis. Advocate: Newsletter of the National Tertiary Education Union, 24(1), p.28. Retrieved from https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=716566619436533;res=IELBUS
Vettori, S., 2016. The employment contract and the changed world of work. CRC Press. ISBN: 978-0-754-64754-6
Everything We Know So Far About 7-Eleven Australia’s Wage Fraud Scandal. (2018). Vice. Retrieved 29 January 2018, from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4wbnqg/everything-we-know-so-far-about-7-eleven-australias-wage-fraud-scandal
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