Australia Post has disclosed to Fair Work Ombudsman that it underpaid 19,500 former workers about $1.8 million, before interest.
In a statement, Australia Post said that they found the underpayments as a result of an audit spanning 1 August 2013 to 31 August 2019.
This was due to a payroll error that miscalculated how much annual leave the Australia Post staff should be paid out upon leaving the service.
A spokesperson for Australia Post told the Sydney Morning Herald that they are contacting the former employees who had been underpaid.
“We are very disappointed that some of our former employees did not receive their full accrued annual leave entitlement. We are grateful that we have the compliance controls in place to uncover mistakes so we can do the right thing in response.”
A spokesperson for the Fair Work Ombudsman said it would conduct an investigation into Australia Post after it self-reported its underpayments and urged staff with concerns to contact it on 13 13 94.
“We expect any employers that identify non-compliance to fully cooperate with our investigations to ensure that employees are quickly repaid their entitlements.”
Australia Post has apologised for the error and said that the underpaid staff will be repaid with interest.