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- Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has worked out the remaining figure for repayments to be made after its 2018 wage theft scandal
- Within the next week, Commonwealth will pay up $14.9 million in owed wages and entitlements
- Another $25 million will be paid by the end of the financial year, bringing the total to date to $53.1 million
- The big bank raised the funds necessary to pay up back in the 2018 financial year, based on best estimates
- Commonwealth shares closed 0.43 per cent up today, selling for $80.06 each
Commonwealth Bank’s (CBA) saga of employee back-payments is approaching its end with another $14.9 million to leave the big bank’s pockets next week.
A review of company payments was launched by the company in early 2018 and is now, according to Commonwealth, substantially complete. The final repayments to customers will be made before the end of the financial year, and the bank said after next week it expects the remaining figure to fall around $25 million.
Since 2018, CBA has coughed up $13.2 million to some 41,000 current and former employees who were not paid properly from 2010 onwards. This means, with today’s announcement, Commonwealth’s employees were out of pocket a total $53.1 million from underpayments and missed.
Commonwealth Bank is among the first of a string of companies to either get caught or turn themselves in for not paying proper employee entitlements over the past few years.
The bank’s CEO Matt Comyn said it is “unacceptable” that the employees and former employees were not paid their correct entitlements.
“This should never have happened and I apologise to anyone impacted by these past errors. Our priority is to complete the payments with interest and, where applicable, superannuation,” Matt said in an announcement to the ASX today.
Commonwealth said along with checking entitlement payments for eligible employees, the review also investigated whether employees were paid appropriately compared to relevant award rates based on their actual work patterns.
The hefty repayments should not put too much of a dent into the company’s financials, however. Commonwealth raised the cash it need to make the payments back in the 2018 financial year, based on estimated at the time.
As such, while Commonwealth was the weakest performer of the big four, by no means did it have a poor trading day.
Commonwealth shares closed 0.43 per cent up today, selling for $80.06 each in a $141.73 billion market cap.
