My immigrant friend works for a contracting company within the Hospitality Industry under the MA000009 award, the company employs >98% immigrants and my understanding is that they are being underpaid.

The employees are routinely rostered 7:30am - 11:00am, however they consistently work beyond the rostered finish time, often until approximately 2:00pm (+/- 1-2 hours). These additional hours have been paid at their ordinary hourly rate, rather than overtime.

The employment contract confirms employment type is part-time and 8 guaranteed hours per week, but it does not include a signed agreement for ordinary hours extending beyond 11:00am, nor have they received or signed any written variation to their agreed work pattern as required under clause 10.4(b) of the award. The employment contract also states that the Award and Act apply to employment independently of the employment contract.

Under clause 10.13(b)(iii) of the award, part-time employees must be paid overtime for any hours worked outside their rostered or agreed ordinary hours. This means that when a part-time employee works beyond their rostered finishing time, those hours are not classified as ordinary hours and must be paid at the applicable overtime rate. Further, clause 28.2(b) confirms that overtime rates apply in the circumstances outlined under clause 10.13(b), reinforcing that overtime is payable for hours worked beyond a part-time employee’s rostered schedule.
So where they are rostered to finish at 11:00am, any time worked beyond this point is required to be paid at overtime rates, not the ordinary base rate as per my understanding of the award.

In 2023 they got Fair Work intermediary involved, the short of this is that the contracting company claims clause 10.13(b)(i) and that the employees are not owed any overtime and are being paid correctly as per the award. Fair Work could not help any further nor confirm or deny if the employee or employer is right, they recommended small claims court and that was the end of their help.

The hospitality award clause 10.13 has two meanings:
10.13          Payment rates
(a)          An employer must pay a part-time employee for ordinary hours worked in accordance with clause 18-Minimum rates.
(b)         An employer must pay a part-time employee at the rates prescribed in clause 28.4-Overtime rate for all time worked in excess of:

(i)             38 hours per week or, if the employee works in accordance with a roster, an average of 38 hours per week over the roster cycle; or
(ii)           the maximum daily hours limitations specified in clause 15.2-Part-time employees; or
(iii)         the employee’s rostered hours.

So does clause 10.13(b)(i) override clause 10.13(b)(iii) or is clause 10.13(b)(iii) irrelevant due to clause 10.13(b)(i)?

As mentioned at the beginning, a high majority of the employees are immigrants and have no idea on awards and entitlements. If overtime is owed to this specific employee, this company would owe MINIMUM excess of $500k in unpaid overtime payments to all past and current employees.
I am not a lawyer, but understand our (Australia's) work awards much more than the immigrants at this workplace who are I believe are being taken advantage of.

IF they are owed overtime payments, small claims courts would only help individual employees if they choose to go through the process (which I would like to help my friend with), but I know most of the employees would not know where to start nor go through with the process.
But ultimately I am fucking sick of these large companies taking advantage of workers (citizens and immigrants), thus suppressing wage growth. Would a class action lawsuit be more viable (we are talking about a lot of money in wage theft)?

TDLR; Employees consistently work beyond their rostered hours, but are paid at base rates for all hours worked in excess of their rostered hours.