When I was 14, I got my first job in a small shop. I remember the excitement of earning my own money until I realised I was being paid $11 in cash to handle angry customers, avoid taking breaks and stay alone until late into the evening. Stories like mine are not rare. Teenage workers are consistently underpaid, devalued, and exploited despite being vital to retail and food industries. This needs to be addressed.
I have since worked in many retail and food shops and this issue has now become even more apparent. Disappointingly lots of young Australians who work retail and hospitality jobs, the most obvious industries for young people entering the workforce, experience these abuses almost as a rite of passage. There has again been increasing conversation of a current class action against Lovisa, filed against the jewellery retail company in early 2025. Many young workers are alleging a range of workplace injustices, including wage theft, abusive management styles and a denial of workplace entitlements.
Additionally, the number of young workers entering the workforce has increased during the Christmas holidays school break. A perfect time for employers to exploit young employees and save money as a result of the ever so handy, junior pay rates.
There are several issues underpinning the problem of underpayment and exploitation in such Australian industries. They all link back to the power that businesses hold over young people, being their unique ability to manipulate and exploit young peoples’ fear and lack of knowledge concerning employee entitlements and the rights of the worker. Junior pay rates legally allow underpayment on the basis of age, even when doing the same work and requiring the same skill set as adult employees. In Australia minimum wage is $24.95 per hour, unless you are exempt or under 21. How fortunate for greedy businesses. Workers aged under 16 are only entitled to 36.8% of minimum wage, equating to $9.18 an hour. Additionally, the Fair Work Ombudsman recovered $473 million in unpaid wages for nearly 160,000 Australian workers for the financial year of 2023–2024, showcasing the lengths companies will go to to exploit their workers.
Many young people do not know their rights or are too afraid to speak out, without knowledge of how this is possible or where to address their concerns.
But businesses are very clever and won’t just under pay staff through cutting their paychecks. Other forms of exploitation were exposed to my friends and I during our time working a summer job at Boost Juice, an iconic Australian juice bar chain. At our local Boost, we were required to arrive 15 minutes early to shifts, not just so we could be punctual, but so we could start working. We were not paid for this, but when arriving early we were required to do stock runs. Once this was completed, we were then allowed to clock on and start paid work. Then, after our paid shift was finished, we had to do stock runs again for 15 minutes. Per shift, we were required to do a total of 30 minutes of additional unpaid work.
While legally, they could not force us to do this and we could have said no, at the age of 15, you are so fearful of management and the potential of a lost job to risk complaining. Thus, the mentality for the majority of junior employees is to just “suck it up and deal with it”. In my experience, my coworkers and I were routinely denied breaks or paid superannuation, a phenomenon that many young Australians are sure to be far too familiar with.
According to a study from Melbourne Law School, approximately 36% of young people have been forbidden from taking entitled breaks, and 24% had not been paid compulsory superannuation. Similar and other disgusting exploitations are also claimed by members in the Lovisa class action. These injustices can easily be passed as poor or lazy management, but this is clearly a larger issue, being a lack of care for young workers.
Young people suffer from underpayment, as Australian corporations exploit the vulnerable and uneducated. Given that they depend on their income, working teenagers usually balance school, university, and even numerous jobs. Importantly, underpayment reinforces economic inequality, especially for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
Many young people do not know their rights or are too afraid to speak out, without knowledge of how this is possible or where to address their concerns. Retail employers know that young workers are easy to replace and often desperate for income, and are more likely to put up with employers cutting dangerous and often illegal corners.
There needs to be stronger enforcement from Fair Work, through simultaneous higher penalties and anonymous reporting mechanisms, so people are confident enough to report unlawful abuses they experience at work and feel that it is a worthwhile pursuit. There should be a reform to junior pay rates, in order to close economic disparities.
But most importantly, there should be more accessible education about workplace rights in TAFEs and universities, and most critically, high schools. Now that I have the power of knowledge, I am empowered enough to report if something is happening at my current workplace, something that I wish I’d have known about at an earlier age.
The retail and food industry is built on young workers, and it is time they are treated with the respect and pay they deserve. Working at 14 taught me a lot, but it shouldn’t have taught me that being young means being taken advantage of. I wish I could teach every individual teenager their rights and to speak up. But realistically, I shouldn’t have to worry about that because employers should be enforced to follow the law and value the work of their employees, and governments should increase funding for working rights education and hold wage thieves accountable.
