The owner of a Sydney 7-Eleven has been fined over $200,000 after a court found he short-changed two migrant employees almost $50,000 and falsified records.

The Fair Work Ombudsman found Harmandeep Singh Sarkaria underpaid two Pakistani staff $49,426 and made false entries to the head office payroll system about the number of hours they had worked at the Blacktown 7-Eleven fuel outlet.

In a Federal Circuit Court judgment Judge Justin Smith said he was not convinced Sarkaria was ‘truly sorry’ for his conduct, and issued the record fine of $214,200 as ‘a warning to others who might be tempted to engage in similar conduct.’

The penalties mentioned were the largest penalties secured against a 7-Eleven franchisee by the Fair Work Ombudsman, which has undertaken a range of compliance actions aimed at addressing systemic non-compliance by 7-Eleven nationally, according to a news release.

“One of the aims of imposing a penalty is to mark a warning for others who might be tempted to engage in similar conduct,” Smith said.

“There was evidence of substantial non-compliance by other 7-Eleven franchisees.”

The underpayments are the result of the employees often being paid rates equivalent to $10 an hour.

“Anyone tempted to implement a business model that revolves around deliberate exploitation of workers should think again,” said Natalie James, Fair Work Ombudsman. “This type of conduct has no place in Australian workplaces and will not be tolerated.”

The Fair Work Ombudsman recently released a report on the findings of its inquiry into the 7-Eleven franchise network.

The inquiry found that a number of franchisees have been deliberately falsifying records to disguise the underpayment of wages.

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