Most people are probably aware that some people and organizations exploit seniors. But there are also some companies who use seniors to exploit staff members.

In this story, the worker explains how her employer allegedly got away with this until she put a stop to it. Read on to see justice (sort of) prevail.

Wage Theft Revenge

I worked in Maintenance for a religious organization that owned a large number of aged care facilities. Even though they were supposedly not-for-profit they went all out to scam the government for as much money as they could.

One time I saw a claim for “wandering behavior” in a bed ridden resident so they could claim he had dementia, put him in a locked ward and get extra money.

But that wasn’t the only problem.

I became aware that many of the non nursing staff were paid less than minimum wage (because God told them they could get away with it) and many were hired from overseas.

In my country you can claim back wages for six years. I was just about to reach that mark and I was thoroughly sick of their hypocrisy.

I scheduled a meeting with the care manager and human resources and in the meeting I requested to be paid the correct wage.

After they realized I was not going to back down, they agreed to pay me correctly and would back pay me, but only if I didn’t tell the other employees.

I declined and it ended up costing them over $700,000 to back pay everyone – I was recording the conversation and took them to Fairwork (an independent workplace ombudsman).

And they paid for it in other ways, too.

They made everyone with the same job description as me redundant because they couldn’t think of a way to legally fire me.

They they outsourced maintenance, which ended up costing them much more. I took a nice holiday with the redundancy pay.

Then, with documents to prove it, I reported them with to the government aged care regulator for the fraud. They were inspected with a fine-toothed comb and two of their flagship homes were put under six months constant government supervision.

Always remember that wage theft is the largest crime wave in history. It still goes on and no one ever goes to jail for it.

Here is what folks are saying.

It’s so sad and worrying. I don’t know how those people sleep at night.

Sounds fair.

They seem super shameless!

I bet these things happen all around the world.

There will always be this kind of person. But better legislation and resources could help weed them out.

Good for her.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.