DISABLED staff at the Wollongong Radio Doctor service will receive 10 months' pay owed to them after a lengthy battle with their employer. The United Services Union (USU) said physically disabled staff employed at the service's North Wollongong call centre since October had been paid almost $3 an hour less than the state clerical and administration grade one award of $19.29 an hour.
They had also not been paid penalty rates.
One staff member, who did not want to be named, said the issue of the award discrepancy was first raised with Wollongong Radio Doctor general manager Michael Feltham in February.
"We printed out a copy of the award and gave that to Michael to look at and it was ignored. It was then brought up at three or four meetings and it was still ignored, " the employee said.
"A number of the people there are blind and they are too scared to say anything."
"He said to me that if I keep going for the wage rise, the call centre might have to be closed."
But late yesterday Mr Feltham agreed to pay 13 staff any money owed to them and said it would be in their bank accounts on August 11.
"We will be paying back all their back monies owed to them, we definitely will," Mr Feltham told the Mercury.
He denied that he had made a mistake with their original wages and said that they had been paid fair money.
"Nothing went wrong, they were all people with disabilities and we employed twice as many people as we needed to employ if they were able-bodied people so we struck a good rate to pay them," Mr Feltham said.
"Say it takes a normal person two minutes to do a task and a person with a disability four minutes, then they are 50 per cent down on their ability and we only have to pay 50 per cent of that particular wage."
But USU southern organiser Rudi Oppitz said this did not apply to Wollongong Radio Doctor.
"There is a process in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission where an employer can make application to the commission for a disability wage to apply, but the position has to be assessed and the work has to be assessed.
"(Mr Feltham) has known about that for ages but has never made the application and it doesn't apply."
Disability work placement company Workskills Illawarra senior manager Matthew Martin said he hoped the incident didn't deter employers from hiring workers with disabilities.
"There are a huge number of positives to be had from employing people with disabilities and we would like to see other employers in the community get on board," Mr Martin said.
