Fine for skimping on pays

A FORMER manager of a Surfers Paradise cafe has been fined $27,200 for underpaying foreign workers nearly $25,000.

Steven Chung, originally a manager of the Oliver Brown chocolate cafe located under the Esplanade’s Soul building, underpaid 12 employees during 2015, including five Korean workers and two other international employees.

One Korean worker, Heera In, was underpaid $9188 across seven months after being paid flat rates of $10 to $16.48 an hour, despite being entitled to higher casual rates.

Other workers were underpaid by $83 to $3839.

Underpaid workers generally washed dishes, took orders or made drinks and dessert.

Chung was fined in the Federal Circuit Court after a judge found he had exploited the workers.

He had also failed to issue pay slips for four employees.

Judge Salvatore Vasta said Chung looked to be discriminating against people from international backgrounds, on a visa or who were young.

“(It) was an enterprise in which Mr Chung quite deliberately calculated to see what it was that he could get away with,” he said. “It would seem that a worker on a visa who came from a non-English speaking background was certainly underpaid more than a person who is a permanent resident of this country from an English-speaking background.”

He said over the course of the year the underpayments would have saved the company up to $80,000.

The Oliver Brown cafe has since gone into liquidation. Mr Chung indicated he was no longer working in restaurants.

The workers were paid back in full last year.