Discount retail chain The Reject Shop has foreshadowed two challenges to an underpayments class action, claiming store managers were not covered by the general retail award and that their allegations have to be run individually.
On the first day of trial in parallel class actions and regulatory proceedings, the Fair Work Ombudsman panned the payment systems adopted by Woolworths and Coles for salaried managers, saying they were “entirely foreign” to the industrial award and that the supermarket giants had “no meaningful proper records” for overtime.
A Federal Court judge has pulled the plug on a bid by the Fair Work Ombudsman for an upcoming trial in wage cases against supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths to be livestreamed like other hearings of public interest in the court.
Discount retail chain The Reject Shop has become the latest Australian company to be stung with an underpayments class action.
Hospitality giant Merivale is contesting a bid by the applicant in a $129 million underpayments class action to issue a second opt out notice to employees, which it said was an attempt to ensure group members “take an interest” in the proceedings.
The fees of a class action firm found to have breached cost disclosure rules in running two underpayments class actions against supermarket chain Romeo’s have been adjusted up, after $260,000 was initially cut from the bill by the Federal Court.
A law firm running underpayments class actions against Coles and Woolworths has sought orders forcing them to hand over contact details for key workers in the Fair Work Ombudsman’s parallel cases, which the supermarket giants lashed as likely to “cause chaos” in the proceedings.
A judge has approved a $5.8 million settlement in an underpayments class action against convenience store chain On The Run despite what she said was the class action law firm’s “extraordinary” reason for reaching the deal.
Courts stepped up their scrutiny of class action settlements in 2022, with judges grappling with difficult issues such as funding commissions in employment cases and whether settlements, even those worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were fair to group members.
A judge has described as “extraordinary” a law firm’s argument that the court should approve a $5.8 million settlement in an underpayments class action against the On The Run convenience store chain partly because it ran out of funds to take the case to trial.