One woman was paid $6.76 an hour and hundreds of her colleagues earned less than $11 an hour while employed to pick mushrooms at one of Queensland’s biggest edible fungi growers.
And the companies involved tried to cover up the underpayments by sending mysterious mushroom picking data and using excuses like “we don’t speak good English”, the Federal Court heard today.
Brisbane Market supplier Troy Marland and his company, Marland Mushrooms Qld Pty Ltd, are on trial in Brisbane for allegedly underpaying 406 workers $646,000.
The Fair Work Ombudsman says the underpayments occurred over seven months in 2014.
Representing the Fair Work Ombudsman in the Federal Court today, barrister Justin Bourke said Ms Hu admitted underpaying her employees while they were contracted to pick Mr Marland’s product.
However, Mr Bourke said Mr Marland denied he knew what was happening and he and his company were therefore not liable.
Mr Bourke said two Fair Work inspectors met with Mr Marland and Ms Hu in February 2014 to explain to the business owners that the mushroom pickers’ wages of 60-80 cents a kilogram picked was well short of the 91 cents a kilogram they should have been earning.
This equated to an average of $11 an hour per worker when it should have been around $22.86 per hour.
Mr Bourke said one worker was paid $6.76 an hour during her 28-day stint on the farm and at no point did she ever earn the legal rate of pay.
