A Crust Gourmet Pizza franchise outlet on Elizabeth Street in Hobart has received $104,000 in penalties for underpaying four migrant workers.
QHA Foods and two of the company’s directors, Anandh Kumarasamy and Haridas Raghuram, deliberately paid migrant employees less than Australian workers.
Three Bangladeshi nationals and one Indian national were underpaid $9,926 while working at the outlet on student visas in 2016.
The four workers were paid a flat rate of $12 per hour compared to Australian workers who were paid $18 an hour and received penalty rates for weekend and public holiday work.
They were also paid $1 per delivery while Australian workers received a cents-per-kilometre rate for home deliveries.
The four workers were paid in cash and did not receive pay slips, with Australian employees receiving payments to their bank accounts and having access to pay slips.
QHA Foods was penalised $80,000 with Kumarasamy and Raghuram fined $12,000 each.
The operators admitted to discriminating against employees on the basis of their nationality and confirmed they provided Fair Work inspectors with false records that had been altered, with hours worked by the four employees deleted.
Along with the penalties, QHA Foods has been ordered to commission workplace relations training for managerial staff.
