Understanding your rights at work
SMLS was recently funded by the City of Greater Dandenong to create some resources to help people with limited English understand their work rights better.
Over the last few years, SMLS has been building our employment law practice. We have helped hundreds of people who have been unfairly treated at their work. In the last year alone, we recovered $194,000 in unpaid wages and entitlements for our clients.
Some of the main things we help with are:
- Unfair dismissal: This is basically when someone is fired from their job in a way that is harsh, unjust or unreasonable. Like our client Michelle*, who asked some questions about her hours and wages, and then was fired the same week.
- Underpayment or Wage Theft: This is when your boss or employer doesn’t pay you the minimum amount you should be paid, or allowances and entitlements (like superannuation) that you are owed are not paid. Like our client Raj*, a chef who was only paid $12 per hour and never paid for his overtime hours.
- Discrimination: When an employer treats their employee poorly because of their race, gender or sexuality (for a full list of traits here). Like our client Fatima*, who came back after parental leave and her boss refused to give her the same job.
- Sham Contracting: Where an employer tries to label someone as a Contractor rather than an Employee. It is usually done so that companies can avoid responsibility for paying fair wages and entitlements like sick leave. Like our client Lee*, who worked for a cleaning company, and was told where to go and what to do by his boss, who provided all the tools and equipment, and paid him an hourly rate. He was told to get his own ABN, and become an independent contractor.
There are a growing number of people with work rights legal problems, and often people do not recognise that they are being treated unfairly. In order to help people understand their rights and recognise when they are being treated illegally, SMLS started developing this educational resources.
SMLS consulted with various people from the communities we serve, employment lawyers and people with lived experience of exploitation at work.
We worked closely with a designer to develop some awesome resources that will help us to teach people about their rights, to recognise unfair employment practices and and where to go to to get help.
We will use these resources when we go out to educate people in the South East about their rights at work.
You can access the resources here:
