Exploitation of International Students at 7-Eleven Store

Corporate Responsibility
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Summary/Conclusion.................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................5
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Introduction
The Director of the company Jing Qi Xia and her store manager of 7-Eleven, Ai Ling Lin
were fined by the Federal Circuit Court for a number of violations regarding workplace law,
which include failure to pay least per hour rates, failure to pay casual loadings, failure to pay
for public holiday penalty rates and for untruthful and deceptive salary records, which
followed lawful action carried out by the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) against the culprits.
The investigations were conducted by the Ombudsman wherein, it was found that three 7-
Eleven employees, who were migrant students from China, between 21 and 45 years of age
and were exploited by the company (Acharya, 2016). Ms. Xia implemented cash-back
scheme in 2015 and informed her staff members through Chinese messaging application “We
Chat” that their salaries would be $15/hour and would require to hand back a part of their
salaries in a safe drop box present in the 7-Eleven store.
Discussion
As per the report of Sydney Morning Herald, the case was highlighted as “7-Eleven operator
fined $335,000 in wage scandals” wherein, workers required to draw and return a share of
their salaries to their employer. The report revealed that the former operator of 7-Eleven
outlet has been found to have poorly paid huge number of dollars to the retail employees
throughout 2015-16 (Le, 2016). The collective fine on the owner and the store manager was
$335,664 for underpaying as well as pay unlawful flat $11.50/hour and every so often even
$3.98/hour to the employees. It has also been specified in the report that the employees used
to transfer amount right in the account of manager Ms. Lin who used to transfer it to the
account of employer. So, the employees were working with the hourly rates of only $8.53 as
found by the Ombudsman. It was also mentioned in the report that Acting Fair Work
Ombudsman Kristen Hannah held that the employers who have demoralized the migratory
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