# unfair?



## clai (Jan 28, 2012)

hi all,
my partner is and international student. he works at a hotel in housekeeping. i think the payment system is unfair but im not sure and am looking for anyone who knows more about this topic.

he gets paid on a room credit system. for one room, he and his assistant each get 5 credits. for 20 credits (4 rooms completed) he is paid for one hour at a rate of $15 dollars something. 

the problems are consistent every day with the following example quite common. from 8 am, he may have 8 rooms to make up which are very messy and take much more than 2 hours, but he will only be paid for 2 hours because of the credit system. 

then he may have no rooms left to check out until later in the afternoon, where he will wait to do these...the time spent waiting is wasted time with no pay, then he may comlete another say, 12 rooms with the pay only adding up to 3 hours at 5 credits per room. 

so he starts at 8 am, will finish at 5 pm doing a 9 hour day with a fair 1 hour lunch break, but is only paid for 5 hours due to the amount of rooms made up...

its different hours every day but he is always AT work, for longer than he is paid. this means his 20 hours work permit for the student visa is also wasted as he is only paid for around 12-15 of them but clocked on for the 20.

as for approching the boss, he is working for an agency and when he asked about this, his agent said he 'doesnt have to work for the agency if he doesnt want to...' 

and as for everyone else, since there is hundreds of international students working for the same agency, he hoplessly tells me it just is the way it is 
is it a fair system somehow?


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## John...WW (Nov 27, 2011)

Clai,

I am not an expert in this however I thought legislation was established to ensure that workers recieved a minumum pay regardless of the pay structure ie comission etc. If you are worried I would ring Fair Work Australia.

John


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## clai (Jan 28, 2012)

thanks john, i dont really understand though. he is getting a fair minimum pay i believe. its not much but i think $15 an hour is quite usual....its the part where he doesnt get paid for all the hours he is at work that is the problem, only for the rooms he makes up. anyway thanks for the advice.


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## Archieog (Jan 28, 2012)

That's their way of keeping staff on premises for a long period of time in case of emergency, but without actually paying them. Sneaky.


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## Dexter (May 5, 2010)

As much as the system seems unfair, IMHO it is completely legal. Australia has an option of offering commission only job and this is an example of one. 

My suggestion for your partner - look for something better where they really pay per hour.


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## havaiana girl (Apr 10, 2010)

Dexter said:


> As much as the system seems unfair, IMHO it is completely legal. Australia has an option of offering commission only job and this is an example of one.
> 
> My suggestion for your partner - look for something better where they really pay per hour.


I don't believe this is legal, I would following this up with the appropriate departments such as Fair Work Aust, ATO


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## Boboa (Mar 24, 2009)

First your partner should be working a max of 20 hours a week. It seems this is not the case so he is breaking the law. 
Is he a contractor with ABN? Because if that is the case the credit system is contract between two entities and is not covered by FWA minimum wage


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## clai (Jan 28, 2012)

thanks dexter and im not sure what to do next havaiana but i might look further into it or he might end up with a new job first. as for boboa, your comments are unnecessary as of course we know how many hours a week he is allowed to work, and i read over my letter to check if i gave a wrong impression but it doesnt 'seem' anything of the sort. of course he is not working over his hours and breaking the law. thanks anyway.


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## Nelly87 (Jul 3, 2011)

Well for one he simply cannot be paid less than the legal minimum wage for his age. I'm nowhere near an expert on this but it shouldn't be too hard to determine what his legal minimum hourly wage would be. If you can't figure it out, you can always try and call a government office that would know, and ask them without too many details or names what the minimum pay would legally be (or how it would be determined).

I can tell you one thing - I used to work in hotel housekeeping back home (I am Dutch) and even though we did not have this silly credit system, it was very alike. We were given 10 minutes for rooms of people who were still staying, 20 minutes for rooms that people left and needed to be prepared for new guests. We got paid for the number of rooms (according to these max time determinations) we cleaned no matter how long we took to do it... they had recorded that with our training we had no reason to take longer than that, so they weren't going to pay for more. If we didn't agree they could get plenty of others who were willing to shed blood, sweat and tears to make the time limits.

Which means if I was assigned 6 "quick" rooms of 10 minutes, I would get paid an hour, even if it took me 2 hours, because they felt they had trained me well enough to be able to do it in 10 minutes (even if I'd break my back doing it).

I ended up getting fired, by the way, because I missed three small spots in a room - that is what you get when you expect people to do something effectively and fast non-stop. That is just the branch and I clearly wasn't made to work in it.


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