Workers at Gloria Jean's Nowra have claimed they are owed thousands of dollars in unpaid super, following revelations that workers at the Corrimal outlet - owned by the same franchisee - were chasing up similar underpayments.
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Journalists have spoken with multiple former workers at Gloria Jean's Nowra who have described shockingly similar allegations as those employed at Corrimal, including tens of thousands in unpaid superannuation, delayed or unpaid wages and a work environment characterised by mismanagement.
The owner of both stores Karolina Gjorsevski has denied the allegations and said that workers were paid their super and wage entitlements in full.
Tayla Lee began working at the Nowra cafe in 2018 and soon after starting realised that her employer contributions were not appearing in her superannuation account.
Ms Lee said she raised this with Ms Gjorsevski and a small amount was deposited into her account, but the amounts did not match what she was owed on her payslips.
"I had to keep following it up," she said.
Having been employed as a casual for over a year when COVID broke out, Ms Lee was also entitled to the $1500/fortnight JobKeeper wage subsidy. But after raising the payment with Ms Gjorsevski, she was told she was ineligible.
"They told me because my husband still worked full time I wasn't eligible, but I knew that wasn't true."
All casual employees who had worked at their current employer for 12 months at the time were eligible for JobKeeper. The $1500 payment was paid to employers, who were then required to pass this on to employees, as a way of retaining the connection between staff and their workplace even when the economy shut down at the height of the COVID pandemic.
The $1500 payment was made regardless of what the worker would have otherwise earned, and the employment status of their spouse or partner.
Ms Gjorsevski said workers entitled to the JobKeeper payment were paid it in full, and were not told this was dependant on their partner's income.
After this, Ms Lee quit, before returning later that year and working at the cafe until 2022. Going through her payslips with an accountant after she left, Ms Lee believes she is owed $16,000 in superannuation.
"My husband and I rent and we're struggling to save to buy a house," she said. "Compared to all my friends' super, I've got nowhere near what they have plus all the money that Gloria Jean's hasn't paid me.
"It's scary."
Long wait for super claims
A second employee who worked at Gloria Jean's in Nowra, who began working there as a teenager while working at another casual job, also claimed they realised what was happening at Gloria Jean's was not normal.
"I was getting paid super from my other job, so I knew I must have been entitled to it."
Having provided their super account details when they started, this employee asked their bosses at Gloria Jean's what was going wrong.
"They said it was getting paid into an account and then when I turned 18 that it would go into my super account."
The Mercury has seen text message exchanges where a co-owner of the cafe said superannuation would be paid into a trust account that would release the funds once the employee turned 18.
Employers must pay superannuation to employees who are under 18 if they work more than 30 hours per week, either to a super fund nominated by the employee or a default super fund.
When the teenage employee was preparing to leave the cafe, they raised the issue of a lack of super with the Australian Tax Office (ATO) in 2016.
"I knew how important super was when I got older and I knew it accumulated interest."
After an investigation, the ATO found in this employee's favour, discovering they were owed nearly $2500. The tax office began to chase the debts, but more than a year later these were still owed.
The last letter the employee received from the ATO was in 2018, and they haven't received anything since.
"I didn't care so much about being owed my money, I cared more about the people after me in the same situation. I thought the ATO might look into them and do something about it."
While the ATO cannot comment on individual cases, in the 2022-23 financial year, the ATO returned over $1 billion in super, both from self-initiated investigations and tip offs from employees.
A submission by the Inspector-General of Taxation in 2017 found unpaid super was "often" not recoverable by the ATO, due to the time it took from when a complaint is made.
A 2016 report from super lobby group Industry Super Australia found "the ATO remains insufficiently resourced to effectively investigate reports of non-compliance".
South Coast Labour Council secretary Arthur Rorris said more needed to be done to ensure workers, and young workers in particular, were paid their super.
"It is clearly and patently unsatisfactory, the process that is in place at the moment to recover super," he said.
In 2024, the federal government passed the Closing Loopholes Act, which among other changes will criminalise superannuation theft.
Mr Rorris said this change would ensure a greater portion of the billions in unpaid super is in the accounts of employees.
"There are billions of dollars stolen from the accounts of Australian workers in superannuation."
For the workers left unpaid at Gloria Jean's, the changes can't come soon enough.
"It's our future and our retirement."
