Company fined record $660,000 for underpaying refugee

A former owner of a Melbourne fruit market has been fined a record penalty of $660,000 after failing to pay a refugee appropriate wages.

Abdulrahman Taleb, former owner and operator of the Sunshine Fruit Market, has been penalised $16,020 and his company Mhoney Pty Ltd $644,000 in the Federal Circuit Court.

Taleb paid an Afghan worker nothing for his initial period of work in 2012 and then a flat rate of $10 an hour for moving and stacking fruit and vegetables at the market. According to the General Retail Industry Award 2010, the average Australian worker should receive $17 an hour for a regular day, $35 on weekends and $43 on public holidays.

This gross underpayment resulted in an average wage of between $3.49 and $9.29 per hour. For the two periods of work in April 2012 and January 2013, which amounted to about four months in total, Taleb underpaid the worker $25,588.

Judge Philip Burchardt criticised Taleb for “taking advantage” of his employee and stated the underpayments were “enormous for such a short time”.

In 2010, the worker left Afghanistan for Australia, and after spending time as an asylum seeker in detention he was then granted Australian residency and released. However, Taleb took advantage of the worker’s new environment, language barrier and lack of knowledge about his working rights.

“[The worker] was a vulnerable employee in that he was a recent arrival to Australia and totally lacked fluency in English, and could reasonably be understood to be most unlikely to be aware of any entitlements at law,” Judge Burchardt said.

As well as being grossly underpaid, the worker did not receive his owed annual leave payments after his employment was terminated, and was rarely granted meal breaks despite working 12-hour shifts.

The company breached record-keeping and payslip laws by paying employees in cash as opposed to creating pay slips, and failing to pay superannuation.

“It was conducted in plain breach of a number of workplace regulations,” Judge Burchardt explained.

As a result, Judge Burchardt punished Taleb by awarding him the largest penalty ever achieved as a result of the regulator’s litigation. The previous record was held by Rubee Enterprises, which was penalised $532,910 after exploiting five workers, including two visa holders.

Judge Burchardt also ordered an injunction against Mr Taleb which prevents him from contravening the Award and the National Employment Standards and means he could face contempt of court proceedings for any further violations proven in court.

The Court found Taleb and his company to be jointly liable for rectifying these underpayments. Taleb will be personally responsible for paying back his former employee up to $6518.52 should the company fail to do so.