According to Australia’s Fair Work Ombudsman, the government regulatory body began investigating possible underpayment of staff on the Whitsundays island in 2020.
Hamilton Island Enterprises had begun its own review slightly earlier the same year and went on to complete the majority of the legwork to determine underpayment over the eight year period, with Fair Work’s initial investigation focussing only on a period between 2018 and 2020.
During these investigations by both Hamilton Island Enterprises itself and the Fair Work Ombudsman, it was found that staff were not paid the correct minimum entitlements based on their Award agreements, including not being sufficiently paid for overtime or penalty rates for weekend and public holiday shifts.
The average back-payment made to individual staff members is around $8,000, but the range spans from $5 to an instance of a $119,446 back payment to one individual.
Hamilton Island Enterprises has also made a “contrition payment” of $750,000, a third of which will go to the Cleaning Accountability Framework, which aims to prevent exploitation of workers in the cleaning industry.
Underpaid workers included food and beverage supervisors, assistant restaurant managers and chefs, as well as front office, clerical and housekeeping staff. Concierges and handymen were also amongst those who were underpaid.
By roughly the middle of 2023, Hamilton Island had paid back staff almost $22 million, after identifying issues between 2014 and 2020.
The business has now signed an Enforceable Undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman to fully resolve remaining underpayment issues and undertake a number of activities to ensure compliance in future.
On the corporate page of Hamilton Island’s website, the organisation “unreservedly apologise[s] for these underpayments and would like to assure all employees finalising all repayments is an absolute priority for our business”.
