fair work act madness

A Perth aviation business and its director have been accused of sacking a teenager after his mum queried his alleged pay of just over $5 an hour.
The company is being prosecuted by Western Australia's Fair Work Ombudsman after allegedly hiring the 16-year-old in November 2010 on $5.32 an hour.

Court documents claim he was sacked in his first week of work after his mother contacted the Fair Work Infoline, received advice the pay rate should have been more than $7 an hour and then met the the director to query why her son was being paid less.

Fair Work inspectors investigated the matter after the teenager and his mother lodged a complaint.

Ombudsman Nicholas Wilson sad the decision to prosecute was made because the dismissal allegedly constituted a serious breach of workplace law.

"Under the Fair Work Act, it is unlawful to dismiss or take any other adverse action against an employee for exercising a workplace right, such as querying or complaining about pay rates," Mr Wilson said.

The business now faces a maximum penalty $6600 and the company $33,000 for each breach of the act.

So the company breached the rules and needs to cop it sweet. But wait a minute, surely some negotiation could have solved the problem. The result of using a baseball bat to fix the problem means that that employer will never again employ a 16 year old no matter what. So the kid wins the battle but the Fair work Act makes it certain that a lot of other 16 year olds will be unemployable.

You would have to ask why a business like this would deliberately underpay by less than $2 per hour. There has to be a reason, maybe the kid was getting some other benefit too, but whatever the reason the outcome is just ridiculous.