Judge issues $75K warning after labour hire firm fails to pay foreign workers

A federal judge says a $75,600 fine for a labour hire company should put any other organisations that might be failing to pay their workers properly on notice.

Four Seasons Workforce and its director Pik Yok Chey were fined in the Federal Court after the firm was found to have failed to comply with two notices issued by the Fair Work Ombudsman.

The compliance notices required the company to back-pay entitlements to two migrant workers who it had supplied to pick blueberries on Coffs Harbour region farms.

In his judgment, Judge Robert Cameron said the workers were vulnerable given they were employed as pieceworkers on temporary visas and had limited English skills.

"A penalty should be of a kind that would deter similar contraventions by like-minded persons or organisations," he wrote.

"A failure to comply with a statutory notice is serious."

The Fair Work Ombudsman became aware of Four Seasons Workforce underpaying workers after it received two complaints from Chinese and Japanese backpackers.

The pair worked for the company at different intervals in 2023 and 2024.

The company was fined $63,000, while Ms Chey was fined $12,600 as Four Seasons Workforce's sole director.

The Fair Work Ombudsman said the workers were paid on a piecework basis according to the total weight of the blueberries they picked.

The ombudsman's media director Matthew Raggatt said the labour hire firm failed to pay them the guaranteed minimum rate, which was applied across the horticulture award.

"So for each day you work as a pieceworker, you have to be paid no less than the minimum hourly rate for casual fruit pickers under the relevant award," he said.

Chinese National Kun Du, who was one of the two workers involved in the case, said in a statement earlier this year that others should not be afraid to come forward.

"I just want to tell them to be brave, to fight for yourself and fight for more people," she said at the time.

More investigations underway

Mr Raggatt said the case against Ms Chey and Four Seasons Workforce was not the only case it had taken to court this year, as it continued investigations into the horticulture sector across the Coffs Coast and Nambucca Valley.

"Those investigations are ongoing, but we have filed another litigation [against an individual] in 2026 in the Coffs Harbour region, and that was in July," he said.

He said that case involved the alleged underpayment of two Japanese fruit pickers working on a farm in Halfway Creek, north of Coffs Harbour.

It has been alleged the two workers were underpaid about $7,000 over a seven-week period. The matter is still before the courts.

Elsewhere, the ombudsman secured more than $180,000 in penalties in Queensland in August this year in a case involving the horticulture industry.

Mr Raggatt said compliance notices were issued before court action was taken to give employers a chance to rectify the issue.

He said improving compliance in this sector and taking action to protect migrant workers were priorities for the regulator.

"Where employers do not comply, including with compliance notices, we will take appropriate action to protect employees," he said.