The Fair Work Ombudsman (“FWO”) has released its most recent annual report, which reveals another significant recovery of $358 million in unpaid wages and entitlements for the 2024-25 financial year. The latest $358 million means that the FWO has been involved in the back-payment of more than $2 billion over the last five years.
Last year’s recoveries arose from the following key activities:
- More than $23.7 million in court-ordered penalties
- 1,220 compliance notices
- 743 infringement notices
- 1,442 proactive activities
The FWO also published its revised Compliance and Enforcement Policy in January 2025 and new Payroll Remediation Guide in April 2025.
A key feature of the FWO’s activity last financial year was its focus on targeted proactive compliance, including through increased “surprise” site inspections across its priority sectors.
We outline below the FWO’s reported activities in relation to its 2024-25 priority areas.
Aged care and disability support services
The aged care sector was identified as a new priority area, with the FWO completing 136 matters and recovering more than $10.6 million for affected workers.
In the disability support services sector, the FWO recovered more than $20 million in unpaid entitlements.
The FWO has noted that the most common areas of non-compliance in these sectors were non-payment of overtime and penalty rates, missed allowances and incorrect payments of final entitlements on termination of employment. Shiftwork is also prevalent in these sectors, with non-compliant rostering arrangements and non-payment of shift loadings and sleepover allowances also arising as a common issue.
Large corporates
The large corporate sector accounted for the highest recovery out of the FWO’s priority areas, with almost $213 million retrieved for workers.
Underpayments in this sector largely stemmed from:
- incorrect award coverage and classification;
- payment of annual salaries that were insufficient to cover minimum award entitlements, including overtime and penalty rates, allowances and loadings;
- failure to prioritise workplace relations compliance into corporate governance frameworks;
- inadequate processes for encouraging and considering employee queries or complaints, or looking for trends in isolated pay queries as potential indicators of systemic non-compliance; and
- a lack of investment in payroll systems, expertise and pay reviews.