Australia's Woolworths admits underpaying staff up to $300 mil

It's no wonder prices were down down at the cashier.

The state broadcaster was underpaying? Wow

you can address the issue by paying back every cent owed to those employees that were underpaid!! that is $300million plus any penalties/fines the Australian government imposes

Been going on for years if not decades, usually Asian migrants/students, occasionally euros, Islanders & Brits even Aussies (the whole thing was exposed in ABC's four corners program years ago. Nothing's changed). Absolutely disgraceful.

The good thing, at the very least is finally they've admitted to it.

To make it up for it, they have to pay every penny that they owed to their staff

Sounds like these criminal penalties are serving good incentive to come clean! Hopefully the success of the program will spread to other countries.

Those at the head of organizations that have underpaid by millions MUST do jail time. It is the only way to discourage others doing the same. It is a wide spread practice to underpay in Australia. They get away with it every time with no penalty on those responsible, just fines on the companies.

On a number of occasions at different jobs I have refused to do unpaid overtime, which was being pushed on me by my bosses. I am not there to do charity work, I am there to earn a wage and when the pay stops, so does the work. No negotiations on that point. After that they always paid overtime any time they asked me to work it.

Yes, they have been busted. However, you can be sure all these employees will get their money’s owed. This is quite different to Japan where in cases like this are solved with a bow and an apology.

"We unreservedly apologise," CEO Brad Banducci said in a statement. "The highest priority for Woolworths Group right now is to address this issue, and to ensure that it doesn't happen again."

HA! how can any one not realise what's been going on? ( possibly they knew along ) but all of a sudden "Oooops!" were sorry, hang on, has some one exposed them? has a disgruntled member of staff exposed there antics to the papers? why did the all of a sudden they come out with this statement that they have been underpaying staff? its nice that they are going to back pay there staff, and I hope previously employed people to, its going to be a nice pay day for xmas for the staff, but if they have got to cough up all of this money, could this bankrupt them?