A contractor working for Manildra in Bomaderry owes its Chinese and Filipino workers about $10,000 each after wrongly holding on to money the company should have paid, its lawyer says.
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The Chia Tung Development Corporation Wollongong was in the Industrial Relations Commission on Friday with the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, which had accused the company of underpaying foreign workers who were in Australia on subclass 457 visas.
CFMEU Wollongong sub-branch organiser Dave Kelly said the Chinese and Filipino workers had been underpaid, and the union took the company to the IRC to get better undertakings from Chia Tung about monies owed.
"There is acknowledgement that there has been massive underpayment, to the tune of thousands of dollars for each employee," he said.
The parties will report back in a month as to whether the pay issues have been resolved.
Chia Tung's lawyer, Rob Macaulay, said the missing money was largely from "deductions" that had been taken from the workers, to pay for their visas and flights.
He said the amount of money owed to the workers was about $10,000 each, of which half had been paid already.
"Chia Tung is working closely and co-operatively with the Fair Work Ombudsman to ensure that there is full compliance with the award," he said. "The company has made some concessions to the Ombudsman that there have been some issues with deductions, which have been rectified.
"We acknowledge that some aspects of their pay was not in accordance with the award but we're working to rectify that."
Mr Macaulay, a partner at Sydney firm Pryor Tzannes and Wallis, conceded it was not legal to deduct visa and flight costs from workers' pay. He said the amount owed to each worker was "about" $10,000.
Mr Macaulay said Chia Tung had tried to recruit locally but could not find specifically experienced workers so it turned to China and the Philippines.
Visa subclass 457 allows companies to sponsor overseas workers to come to Australia for temporary jobs. The 457 system was designed to fill skills shortages in Australia. The list of jobs available for sponsorship includes welders, fitters, metal fabricators and bricklayers.
Mr Kelly said the CFMEU would stick with the case.
"They're guests in our country - they have a right to be afforded pay and conditions as per Australian law," he said.
"But secondly, we don't want this to become a destination for cheap labour."
