Where to Complain if Your Employer Pays Less Than the Minimum Wage in Australia?

Working in Australia as an international student should be straightforward. You show up, you do the work, you get paid what you're owed. For hundreds of thousands of students every year, that's exactly how it goes.

But for a significant number, particularly those working in hospitality, cleaning, retail, and fast food, something goes wrong. They get paid less than the legal minimum. Penalty rates disappear on weekends. Cash-in-hand arrangements leave no paper trail. Trial shifts go unpaid. And the student says nothing, because they're worried about their visa, or their English, or their employer's reaction.

This guide explains exactly who the Fair Work Ombudsman is, what they can do for you, why your visa status is not a barrier to getting help, and how to make a complaint from start to finish.

What Is the Fair Work Ombudsman?

The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) is an independent Australian Government agency. Its job is to help employees and employers understand their rights and responsibilities under Australian workplace law, and to investigate and enforce those laws when they're broken.

The FWO is not a court, but it has real powers. It can investigate employers, compel them to hand over pay records, require them to back-pay workers, issue formal warnings and compliance notices, and take employers to the Federal Court where serious breaches are found.

The service is free for workers. You do not need a lawyer to contact the FWO. You do not need to speak perfect English. And critically for international students, you do not need to be working within your visa hours limit to seek the FWO's help.

Why International Students Are Particularly Vulnerable

The FWO's own data and enforcement record paint a clear picture. International students are disproportionately represented in wage theft cases, concentrated in industries like hospitality, fast food, cleaning, and agriculture, which have historically high rates of non-compliance.

In 2024, the Federal Court ordered the operators of Sushi Bay outlets in NSW, Darwin, and Canberra to pay a record $15.3 million in penalties after they were found to have deliberately underpaid 163 workers, mostly young migrants on student and working visas, paying flat rates as low as $14 per hour, well below the legal minimum. The court described the operators' conduct as "calculated and audacious," targeting workers unaware of their entitlements. Individual underpayments in that case ranged up to nearly $84,000 per worker.

That case is extreme in scale but not unusual in pattern. The same dynamic, employer exploits students who don't know their rights or won't complain, plays out in smaller ways across the country every week.

What keeps students silent is fear: fear of visa consequences, fear of losing their jobs, fear of retaliation. This guide addresses each of those fears directly.

Your Visa Is Safe

This is the most important thing to understand:

Your employer cannot cancel your visa. Visa decisions are the sole responsibility of the Department of Home Affairs. Your employer has no role in that process and cannot initiate action against your visa.

More importantly, even if you have breached your visa conditions, for example, by working more than the permitted 48 hours per fortnight, you can still get help from the FWO. Under an arrangement called the Assurance Protocol between the FWO and the Department of Home Affairs, the Department generally will not cancel a student's visa for breaching work conditions if that student is cooperating with an FWO investigation into workplace exploitation.

The Study Australia government website states this clearly: "Your employer can't cancel your visa. Only the Department of Home Affairs can grant, refuse or cancel visas. It's not FWO's role to check your visa. If you have breached your visa (for example, by working too many hours), you can still get help from FWO."

If you are assisting the FWO and agree to share your information with the Department of Home Affairs, the Department has also committed not to treat the visa breach as negative information in future visa applications.

What the FWO Can Help With

The Fair Work Ombudsman handles complaints related to minimum entitlements under the Fair Work Act, modern awards, and enterprise agreements. In practice for international students, this covers:

• Underpayment of wages: being paid less than the minimum wage or less than your award rate
• Unpaid penalty rates: not receiving the higher rates owed for weekends, public holidays, or overtime
• Unpaid casual loading: casual employees are entitled to a 25% loading on their base rate; if you're hired casually and not receiving this, you're being underpaid
• Unlawful deductions: your employer taking money from your pay without proper authorisation
• Unpaid trial shifts: any hours you work are payable; trial shifts are not a legitimate exception under Australian law
• No payslip: employers are legally required to provide a payslip within one working day of each pay period
• Record-keeping violations: employers must keep accurate time and wage records; failure to do so is itself a breach

What is not covered by the FWO: visa conditions, immigration issues, workplace safety (this falls under state-based Work Health and Safety regulators), and discrimination (handled by the Australian Human Rights Commission).

Before You Complain: Check What You Should Be Earning

Before lodging a complaint, establish what you're actually owed. The FWO provides free tools to do this.

The Pay and Conditions Tool (PACT) at fairwork.gov.au allows you to enter your industry, job type, and employment status and see the minimum rates that apply to you, including base rates, penalty rates for weekends and public holidays, and allowances. This is the most important tool to use first.

Industries and their awards: Most industries in Australia are governed by a modern award, which sets minimum pay rates above the national minimum wage. Common awards for student workers include:

If you don't know which award applies to you, the PACT tool will identify it.

Keep your own records. The FWO offers a free smartphone app called Record My Hours, available in 18 languages, that automatically logs your hours based on your phone's location when you set your workplace. If you don't use the app, keep a manual log: date, start time, finish time, hours worked, amount paid. This is your evidence.

How to Make a Complaint: Step by Step

Step 1: Try to resolve it directly (optional but often effective)

Before going to the FWO, you can raise the issue with your employer. This is not required; you can go straight to the FWO if you prefer, but many underpayment situations resolve at this stage, particularly where the employer has made a genuine mistake rather than a deliberate one.

Keep any communication in writing (text, email). If your employer acknowledges the error and commits to paying you, get it in writing.

Step 2: Lodge a Request for Assistance at fairwork.gov.au

Go to fairwork.gov.au and use the online form. This is called a "Request for Assistance" (RfA). You will need to provide:

• Your contact details
• Your employer's name and address
• The nature of the complaint (what you believe you haven't been paid)
• Approximate dates and amounts were known

You do not need to know the exact dollar amount of underpayment at this stage. A reasonable estimate is sufficient.

Step 3: Anonymous reporting (if you don't want to be identified)

You can also make an anonymous tip-off at fairwork.gov.au without providing your name. Anonymous reports do not result in direct assistance to you; the FWO cannot recover your wages without engaging you as a complainant, but they can trigger investigations that protect other workers.

Anonymous tip-offs have surged: the FWO received 25,608 anonymous reports in 2024-25, up 50% from the previous year.

If you want to recover wages but are nervous about being identified, contact the FWO Infoline first to discuss your options. Confidentiality requests can be made; the FWO is more likely to protect your identity if you're still employed by the same employer.

Step 4: What happens after you lodge

The FWO will contact you to explain the process and advise on next steps. Not every complaint results in a formal investigation; the FWO prioritises cases involving deliberate non-compliance, vulnerable workers, or systemic patterns. However, the FWO will still try to help you resolve your individual complaint.

Possible outcomes:

• Mediation: the FWO facilitates a discussion between you and your employer to resolve the issue
• Contravention letter: the employer is told what law they broke and is required to fix it
• Letter of caution: a formal warning on the employer's record
• Compliance notice: requires the employer to back-pay within a set timeframe
• Litigation: for serious cases, the FWO takes the employer to the Federal Court

Step 5: If the FWO doesn't investigate

If the FWO decides not to investigate your complaint or takes no action, you can request a review. If you remain unsatisfied, you may be able to apply directly to the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia. You can claim up to $100,000 in unpaid wages and entitlements. Claims of $20,000 or less can use the court's simpler small claims process.

Language Is Not a Barrier

The FWO provides services in multiple languages. Their website has information in over 30 languages and an automatic translation service. Their Infoline (13 13 94) can connect you with an interpreter at no cost.

The Record My Hours app is available in 18 languages. Animated storyboard explainers about Australian workplace rights are available in multiple languages at fairwork.gov.au.

If you need additional legal support, the International Students Work Rights Legal Service, referenced by several universities, including the University of Melbourne, offers free, confidential, multilingual legal advice specifically for student visa holders. Ask your university's student services team about accessing this.

Other Support Channels

The Numbers Behind the Problem, and the Recoveries

To understand why using the FWO matters, consider the scale of what's being recovered.

In 2024-25, the FWO recovered $358 million for more than 249,000 underpaid workers, taking total recoveries over the past five years to over $2 billion. The agency secured a record $23.7 million in court penalties in that year alone.

The FWO has specifically named fast food, restaurants, cafes, and hospitality as priority enforcement sectors, the industries where international students most commonly work. Visa holders remain an explicit enforcement priority.

Every student who lodges a complaint, or even an anonymous tip, contributes to this enforcement picture. The FWO identifies patterns across complaints. A student who reports underpayment at a single café may be one of dozens of workers at that employer or chain being underpaid in the same way.