State has 'egregious' wage theft cases, says Unions Tasmania boss

The Albanese government's Closing Loopholes Bill makes it a criminal offence to deliberately underpay workers - something that Unions Tasmania secretary Jessica Munday said she has been calling on for a decade.

"We think that this is a very good thing for workers in Tassie - we have had some of the most egregious cases of wage theft in the country," she said.

"Significant penalties, both jail and in terms of monetary penalties, is something we've called for probably ten years.

There were numerous cases of employers around Tasmania being found to have underpaid their workers and it was rife in certain industries, including those with a heavy migrant workforce, she said.

A crackdown by the Fair Work Ombudsman in 2022 resulted in over $121,000 in unpaid wages being recovered on behalf of 144 employees of Launceston restaurants and fast food businesses.

Other changes in the federal bill included:

But some of the proposals have been heavily criticised by employer groups, who claimed that they would damage the Australian economy, reduce productivity and add to cost of living pressures on households.

Tasmanian Minerals, Manufacturing and Energy Council chief executive Ray Mostogl said existing legislation already allowed the authorities to target unscrupulous employers doing wrong.

"There are already mechanisms to punish them and to catch them out ... so putting in even bigger punishments isn't going to change behaviour," he said.

Placing more burdens on 99 per cent of employers in order to catch the 1 per cent doing the wrong thing was not a great thing to do at a time when the country's productivity has been falling, Mr Mostogl said.

"Anything that slows productivity down is bad for the country," he said.

He also criticised the bill's 'same job, same pay' requirements that force employers to pay identical wages for similar jobs.

"The inability to differentially reward performance is a recipe for mediocrity," Mr Mostogl said.

He also said the bill undermined employers' ability to offer casual employment - a mode of work preferred by many employees.

"For some employees, the ability to stay as a casual is actually a benefit," Mr Mostogl said.

"In my experience, where I've offered casuals permanent employment conditions, the majority of them will say no, they'd rather the money."

Ms Munday said the employer groups' characterisation of the bill as harmful to the economy was baseless and "scaremongering in the extreme".

"This shouldn't be controversial, these are not radical changes, but they might deliver a little bit more to workers in an environment where cost of living is a huge problem," she said.

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