Hi there
This is my first post to this forum - I apologise if any of these questions have been answered before.
My wife is a casual employee at a local foot spa. Her duties include nail care, pedicure and light massage. The employer appears to exclusively hire staff from overseas. My wife is also from overseas, with temporary residency while we await our partner visa. Most of the employees are casual, but a minority are employed full time.
There are a couple of things that have raised red flags when my wife has discussed some of the business's rostering processes and other activities with me.
The first is that, apparently, the receptionist chops and changes "break time" on the fly. If a client cancels a booking, then the receptionist alters the roster and assigns a "break" - ie unpaid break - to the staff member who was assigned to that client for the duration of the appointment. This can range from half an hour to an hour. I could understand if the receptionist were moving break time - but she is adding break time - effectively cutting staff hours on the fly while the staff member is at the workplace. Is this shifty? To me it looks like the staff member is being treated as a subcontractor rather than a casual employee.
The second is that this receptionist occasionally calls my wife up fifteen minutes to half an hour before my wife is scheduled to work, and tells her a client has cancelled so she should come in later. My understanding is that there needs to be minimum notice when a staff member's roster is reorganised, and fifteen minutes to half an hour's notice is nowhere near the minimum. Is my understanding correct?
The third is that the employer recently started paying penalty rates for work on Saturdays. By recently, I mean in the last couple of weeks. Has any legislation changed which would prompt this, or should the employer have been paying penalty rates all along? If they should have been paying penalty rates all along, what would our next steps be? We don't have full records of my wife's rostered hours for her tenure - does the employer need to keep a record of this?
Thanks in advance for any information or pointers to information that anyone can provide.
Cheers
This is my first post to this forum - I apologise if any of these questions have been answered before.
My wife is a casual employee at a local foot spa. Her duties include nail care, pedicure and light massage. The employer appears to exclusively hire staff from overseas. My wife is also from overseas, with temporary residency while we await our partner visa. Most of the employees are casual, but a minority are employed full time.
There are a couple of things that have raised red flags when my wife has discussed some of the business's rostering processes and other activities with me.
The first is that, apparently, the receptionist chops and changes "break time" on the fly. If a client cancels a booking, then the receptionist alters the roster and assigns a "break" - ie unpaid break - to the staff member who was assigned to that client for the duration of the appointment. This can range from half an hour to an hour. I could understand if the receptionist were moving break time - but she is adding break time - effectively cutting staff hours on the fly while the staff member is at the workplace. Is this shifty? To me it looks like the staff member is being treated as a subcontractor rather than a casual employee.
The second is that this receptionist occasionally calls my wife up fifteen minutes to half an hour before my wife is scheduled to work, and tells her a client has cancelled so she should come in later. My understanding is that there needs to be minimum notice when a staff member's roster is reorganised, and fifteen minutes to half an hour's notice is nowhere near the minimum. Is my understanding correct?
The third is that the employer recently started paying penalty rates for work on Saturdays. By recently, I mean in the last couple of weeks. Has any legislation changed which would prompt this, or should the employer have been paying penalty rates all along? If they should have been paying penalty rates all along, what would our next steps be? We don't have full records of my wife's rostered hours for her tenure - does the employer need to keep a record of this?
Thanks in advance for any information or pointers to information that anyone can provide.
Cheers