Australian coffee shop fined for breaking workplace law

A coffee shop and cafe in Perth has fallen foul of the law after it was discovered that they were illegally deducting money from the wages of their employees.

The Australian business has since been forced to pay up a substantial compensation bill, alongside their imposed fines for breaking working regulations.

“Deducting money from employee wages as a punishment, or as some sort of performance management tool, is completely unlawful,” said Natalie James from the Fair Work Ombudsman who slammed the actions of the coffee store.

“Further,” she continued, “this employer was asking its staff to pay up to AUD$1,200 each out of their own pockets for in-house demonstrations.”

Needless to say, the employees are no longer under contract with the company and each have been compensated to the tune of $5,000.

It also appears that the establishment had a list of in-house fines which bordered on the bizarre. Staff were forced to fork out $30 if a tomato was placed wrongly in a club sandwich, $10 for failing to prepare parsley in preparation for the next day and one member of staff had $112 taken off their wage after management decided a pork dish ‘was not crispy enough’.

“As a rule of thumb, deductions from wages are generally unlawful if they are not authorised by the employees in accordance with workplace law,” Natalie says. “Clearly these deductions only benefitted the employer, which is why we have taken this matter seriously and sought a commitment from the business that this behaviour will not be repeated.”

The Australian Fair Work Ombudsman issued the Perth business with a number of on-the-spot fines which totalled$7650 and also handed them a Letter of Caution, placing the establishment on notice.

Any further contraventions of national workplace legislation could result in action.

The name of the café and coffee shop was not released by the authorities.

photo: vagawi (Creative Commons)