Reference :- Workers have been told that complicated awards are responsible for accidental wage theft .

Reference :-   Wage theft by big companies , and small , is estimated to exceed 1.35 billion quid every year in Australia .

 The Sky Reply is not in the habit of singling out specific offenders in such sensitive matters .   But stuff it , Woolworths appears to have underpaid it's staff by 300 or 400 million and that seems like a lot for one company .   Did their accountants wonder why their profit projections were pessimistic to the tune of nearly half a billion ?  Or did they figure they must have sold more of their new line of tofu burgers than expected .  Maybe their accountants studied at the same place as Angus Taylor back when he thought he was close friends with Naomi Wolf . That would explain their lack of proficiency with mathematics .

 Never chastened  , the conservative press has been quick to blame the usual suspects .  Not the pricks who stole the money , of course , but  the government for introducing too many regulations , and the unions for demanding overly complex awards .   The award for cleaners must be especially regulated and complex , since they have been robbed more often  than most .

Well , who can say ?   Maybe a computer that can keep tabs on thousands of items of stock , their expiry dates , their prices and specials and loyalty rewards , their profit margins,  their sales volumes relative to other brands , their seasonal availability , their wholesale price fluctuations , their popularity by postcode , their rate of return , their position on the shelves , the style of their packaging , their rate of breakage ,  their cost of transport and their association with the purchase of other products  etc  ...... just can't work out how to avoid underpaying  the person who mops the floors.  Though , apparently it is easy enough to work out how to avoid  overpaying  them .

My son , Ken junior , is curious to know if any of the CEOs of these big companies have been underpaid for years .   He says that their salaries must be very complicated , with large sums  , fringe benefits and associated taxes ,  travel expenses , share options , bonuses and the suchlike .   That would appear to be far more complex than the cleaner's award , so I guess those CEOs must have been getting  overpaid , I mean underpaid , for years also .

  Ken junior reckons somebody should look into that .      Your comrade , Ken