HOW 7 ELEVEN IS RIPPING OFF ITS WORKERS The lot of the average 7-Eleven worker in Australia is as simple as it is bleak: you get paid half the $24.50 an hour award rate - or less - and if you complain your boss threatens you with deportation. It’s highly illegal and goes against the Australian tenet of giving people living in this country a “fair go”. A joint investigation into 7-Eleven stores by Four Corners and Fairfax Media has found systemic underpayment of wages and the doctoring of payroll records within the country’s biggest convenience store chain. Politicians, lawyers and regulators all say something should be done to help these exploited and intimidated workers who are often are international students. Doctored time sheets and rosters, store financials with possibly understated wage bills, store reviews and explosive documents relating to payroll compliance from head office are further evidence that something is deeply rotten within the 7-Eleven Australia empire. Within days of the scandal breaking, the company is in crisis and has announced a “independent review” of wages and offered to buy out franchisees.

When 7-Eleven chairman Michael Smith bragged about the lengths the franchise giant had taken to compensate thousands of underpaid foreign workers, he failed to impress underpaid workers Manish and Anshu Mehra.7-Eleven's wage repayment program rejected the couple's $300,000-plus compensation claims on the basis of the "direct family relationship to the franchisees alleged to have been facilitating the underpayment".

Another 7-Eleven operator has been implicated in the convenience store chain’s “cash-back” wage exploitation scandal, in which workers were forced to withdraw and hand back part of their pay to their employer.The former operator of the 7-Eleven outlet in the heart of Melbourne’s legal precinct, near the corner of William and Little Lonsdale streets, has been found to have underpaid retail workers thousands of dollars throughout 2015-2016.