A phone call from his university was the final straw for international student Ali Syed.

Ali had been working the graveyard shift serving late-night city revellers in a Sydney convenience store since he arrived in Australia in 2022.

For the first few months he received regular pay, which helped keep him afloat as he studied for his master’s degree in cybersecurity.

Soon, however, Ali’s boss began withholding his wages. 

His salary was often paid late, and rarely did it cover all the hours he had worked.

Now the university was threatening to expel him and report him to Home Affairs unless he paid his overdue fees.

“I was very helpless, it was stressful,” recalled Ali, who spoke to the ABC using a pseudonym due to an ongoing legal process.

When he confronted his boss about the underpayment, he was fired.

All up he is owed more than $60,000 in lost wages and entitlements, says his Legal Aid NSW lawyer Giles Fryer, who notes it’s a “life-changing amount of money”.

Ali is one of a growing number seeking help from the organisation in the last year, with a 43 per cent surge in people saying they’ve been underpaid wages, entitlements or superannuation.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has also answered 330,000 enquiries relating to wage theft and has recovered $509 million in unpaid wages and entitlements in the past financial year.

More than a quarter of a million Australian workers have been back-paid.

But not everyone has been so lucky.

Underpaid workers left devastated

Miriam, a regional New South Wales resident aged in her late 60s, sought help from Legal Aid NSW after she was unexpectedly made redundant as a retail worker in a small business.

She is also using a pseudonym to protect her privacy.

Miriam said the turning point was when she asked her employer for a pay slip — something she had not received during her more than 15 years working for the company — as she needed it to prepare for getting a pension.

“I asked for a pay slip on the Thursday and the following Tuesday he terminated me,” she said.

Legal Aid calculated she was underpaid at least $130,000 in the last six years, the time limit imposed for underpayment claims.

Despite the Federal Circuit and Family Court ordering a payment of more than $140,000 to Miriam, she didn’t see a dollar as her employer filed for bankruptcy.

“Yes I’m devastated,” she said.

“I was hoping to get my money and leave NSW.”

Underpayment ‘everywhere’ in Australia

Mr Fryer said this case highlights how widespread and entrenched underpayment is in Australia.

“Young and old, city and regional, it’s everywhere, unfortunately it’s part of Australia’s work culture,” he said.

He said clients are talking about rising household costs and increased interest rates.

“They are concerned that they’re being underpaid at work and they are coming forward perhaps more frequently than they otherwise would to seek advice about entitlements,” he said.

In the last two financial years combined, the Fair Work Ombudsman recovered more than $1 billion in unpaid wages and entitlements.

Fair Work data show that since 2009, more than 40 per cent of 60,000 businesses audited were non-compliant in regard to wages.

New laws to criminalise wage theft and close loopholes undercutting pay and conditions for workers come into effect from January 2025.

Some of the nation’s biggest employers and institutions have come under fire for large scale underpayments including Qantas, BHP, NAB, CBA, Coles, Woolworths, Super Retail Group and the ABC.

A class action alleging NSW Health underpaid junior doctors has settled after the department agreed to a payout of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.

The University of Queensland recently revealed it owed $8 million in unpaid wages to about 10,000 staff.

The claim brings wage theft claims in the tertiary sector in excess of $180 million, according to the National Tertiary Education Union.

Workers fight back: ‘Our time is money’

McDonald’s is facing a $250 million compensation claim over allegedly denying paid breaks to thousands of workers.