Boss tries cutting wages from $26 to $14 an hour

Captioning workers who were sacked after demanding the minimum wage will have their case heard by the FairWork Commission in September.

The workers at Caption It, provider of closed captions to the ABC, SBS, Channel 7 and Channel 10, had been taken off their casual wage of $26 an hour and put onto piece rates, which left some earning as little as $14 an hour.

When six casuals submitted a joint letter to their CEO, Nicole Gilvear, to say that this was below the minimum wage of $21 per hour and therefore illegal, they were told to leave the building, and Gilvear called the police.

“From what we’ve heard, it’s not the first time she’s called the police on an employee. I’m really glad we stood up for ourselves though. Bosses will try to get away with it if they think they can and if nobody says anything”, said Ben Crabtree, one of the sacked workers.

After being sent home, three workers had their shifts cancelled, pending management’s decision on how they would be disciplined.

“They left us without pay for weeks pending this sham ‘disciplinary meeting’”, Crabtree said.

The workers refused to meet with management individually to be disciplined and demanded instead to have a collective meeting about the pay dispute with their union present. Management refused.

Within days, workers were told to return to work at their previous hourly wage, with back pay for the amount that they were underpaid.

“I think they got some legal advice and saw that we were right, so they had to find another way to get rid of us”, Crabtree said.

Two days after their return, a round of redundancies was announced. Everyone who signed the original letter either quit or was made redundant.

But Crabtree says workers are determined to keep fighting.

“We won the first round. That’s the great thing. Then they thought that they could get some clever HR firm to make us go away. But we’re not going anywhere.”