Lush Australia to fork out $2m after underpaying 5,000 employees

Lush Australia has announced that its set to fork out $2 million after underpaying 5,000 members of staff over an eight-year period.

The retail giant, which is known for its colourful bath bombs, body lotions and shower gel, admitted that the error was a result of a ‘failure to upgrade’ internal systems when the Modern Awards were introduced in 2010.

“This resulted from a very serious failure on our part to upgrade our internal systems,” Lush Australia director, Peta Granger, said.

“We should have had far more respect for our people’s pay and upgraded our payroll infrastructure to keep up with the growth of our business.

“We would never knowingly under pay. This was not deliberate. It goes against everything we value and believe in, and we are so sorry to have let our staff down in this way.”

She claimed the company’s manual payroll systems were ‘not sophisticated enough to interpret correctly’ the ‘intricate elements’ of the Retail and Manufacturing Awards.

Ms. Granger said that since the company discovered the breach, they have been working ‘around the clock’ to figure out a solution and will ‘pay every cent owed’ to those who have been affected.

The process of employing external payroll experts to dissect handwritten paper timesheets is set to cost Lush $1.5 million.

On top of that, Lush is expected to fork out $2 million in back payments to staff who have been affected.

“We are calling on everyone who’s worked for us in Australia over the last eight years to get in contact and register their details online, in case you are one of the people owed money,” she said.

“We are sincerely sorry for letting our staff down so badly. They put their hearts and souls into Lush and it’s them, along with our customers, who drive our business, fuel our growth and make it the vibrant place it is.

“We made mistakes on pay, we found those mistakes and now we are doing everything in our power to pay the money we owe as quickly and as transparently as possible. We know we’re far from perfect, but we always strive to do the right thing”.

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