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My Info Tech Partner has been fined for failure to provide back pay to a full-time IT helpdesk employee.
The Federal Circuit and Family Court has levied a penalty of $41,250 against Perth IT company My IT Partner – trading as My Info Tech Partner – regarding its failure to comply with a compliance notice that directed it to calculate and back pay an employee who worked full-time on the company’s IT helpdesk.
The employee worked between August 2019 and August 2022.
The employee contacted the Fair Work Ombudsman regarding the lack of pay, after which the Ombudsman investigated the case.
A Fair Work Inspector found that the company had not met the employee’s minimum wage requirements, had failed to pay them for the last three weeks of their employment, and had not paid the employee for accrued but untaken leave.
The operators of My Info Tech Partner failed to comply with the notice, and the Fair Work Ombudsman took the case to court.
When handing down his judgment on the matter, Judge Sandy Street said that My Info Tech Partner’s behaviour showed a “deliberate and intentional defiance of the notice,” noting that the company’s sole director, Aaron Fisher, threatened the Fair Work Ombudsman with a lawsuit if it continued to seek enforcement of its compliance notice.
“The evidence as to continued existence of [My IT Partner] and [its] engaging employees and the absence of any culture conducive to compliance and the role of senior management in the deliberate and intentional contravention in the present case warrants the court imposing the maximum penalty on [the company],” Judge Street said.
Anna Booth, the Fair Work Ombudsman, said her office will always take legal action to protect the rights of employees.
“The case highlights that employers who fail to act on these notices – including those who deliberately seek to defy them – risk substantial penalties in addition to being ordered to back pay workers.
“Any employees with concerns about their pay or entitlements should contact us for free advice and assistance,” Booth said.
In addition to the fine, the court has ordered My Info Tech Partner to not only calculate and back pay the employee as demanded in the compliance notice but also to pay interest and superannuation.
A company spokesperson told Cyber Daily that “the Australian industrial relations system is too one-sided”.
“It seems like a massive waste of time and money for Fair Work to go after a company with no current employees outside a working director, and given what has transpired, the company will be very cautious about hiring anyone again.
“It’s time every small-business owner and company director in Australia rallied in Canberra to lobby for a return of balance to Australia’s Workplace Relations system,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson noted that My Info Tech Partner had lost a major client at the time, which “was contributing 90 per cent of the employee’s salary”.
“If the company does pay employees more than it earns in income, then the company is forced to close down and everyone loses their job,” the spokesperson said.
“What happened to us in this instance could happen to every business and company in Australia.”
My Info Tech Partner provides a range of IT support services, including cyber security, cloud services, and “dark web protection”.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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