A delegate finds a casual on a temporary visa is missing every penalty rate she is owed — and she is begging him not to raise it. What would you do?

I have worked in the same distribution centre for about six years now. I know the floor, I know the machines, and I know most of the crew by name. A few months back we took on a new casual, I will call her Marisol. Good worker. Quiet, keen, always first to put her hand up for the jobs nobody else wants. About three weeks in, we got talking on smoko and I asked her what shifts she was picking up. She told me she had done four Saturdays in a row and had not seen a cent of weekend loading.

Just her flat base rate, same as a Tuesday. I asked to see her payslip and sure enough, no penalty rates at all. Not for weekends, not for the late finishes she had been doing either. Now, I have been a delegate long enough to know this is not a grey area. She is owed that money under our agreement, plain and simple. So I said, let me take this to the organiser, we will get it sorted, and you will probably get back what you are owed going back to your first shift. That is when her face changed.

She asked me not to. She said she is on a temporary visa, the shifts are the only thing keeping her afloat, and she is terrified that if she becomes "the one who caused trouble" they will just stop rostering her. No sacking, no paper trail, just a roster that quietly dries up. She said she would rather cop the underpayment than lose the work. I told her the union can raise this without naming her, that there are protections against that kind of treatment. She nodded, but I could tell she did not believe me, and honestly I could not promise her the roster would not change.

I have seen it happen to others. Management does not need a reason to stop offering a casual shifts. So here is where I am stuck. If I say nothing, she keeps getting robbed every week, and I am fairly sure she is not the only casual on the floor in the same boat. If this is happening to her, it is a pattern, not a one off. But if I push it and her hours dry up, I am the one who took her livelihood away, even if I did it trying to help. I keep going back and forth. Part of me thinks my job as a delegate is to act on what I know, full stop, and that letting an underpayment slide because one person is scared just lets the company keep doing it to everyone.

The other part of me thinks it is not my call to make with her money and her visa and her rent on the line. So I am throwing it to you lot. What would you do? Do you respect her wishes and sit on it? Do you raise it as a "general" issue about casual penalty rates without ever mentioning her, and hope that shakes something loose? Do you go to her one more time with a proper plan and some real protections before you act? Or is there a way through this I am not seeing? Drop your thoughts below.

I have got to make a decision by next roster and I would rather learn from people who have been here before than get it wrong on my own, The organiser didn’t really have an answer for me.

Originally published in The Tocsin at workershub.org.au.