Unethical Practices in Australian Fruit Supplier Company

Managing in the Global
Environment

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Employment code in Australia...................................................................................................3
Principles of the United Nations................................................................................................4
Breach in the UN principles...................................................................................................5
Recommendations......................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................7
Appendix....................................................................................................................................8
The case..................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
Ethical business practices are required to be carried out by the industries in Australia to
ensure that the rights of the workers and the stakeholders of the companies are protected and,
the companies fulfil their responsibilities towards the customers, society and the
environment. The case study chosen for this project highlights the unethical practices
conducted by an Australian Fruit Supplier company, Cutri Fruits. According a recent report
in the newspaper, this organization in Australia possesses evidence of illegal workers and
exploitation. The investigation reports of Fairfax media showed some serious misconduct
within the operations and the practices of the company. The company was claimed to have
engaged illegal workers and also, paying the workers under the minimal wage (Webb, 2016).
The details of the article can be found in Appendix. This report will analyse the unethical
practice of the organization and highlight the areas of non compliance of the organization
with the employment laws and principles.
Employment code in Australia
As mentioned above, the organization is not following the guidelines of the employment code
in Australia pertaining to the minimum wage and legal employment of the employees for the
organization. According to the Code of Ethics and Practice Guidelines laid down by the
Australian authorities, the Australian company owners need to “Pay an appropriate wage for
the role, and reimburse agreed out-of-pocket expenses”. The employees must be provided
with the appropriate wage or the minimum wage agreed by the Australian Government which
is $740.80 per week (Employsure Pty Ltd, 2019) and, if the workers are not provided even
with this amount, the business practice is considered to be completely unethical. Also, the
company employs a number of workers from the foreign nations without any proper
documentation and engages them to work illegally on the wages which are even less than the