Unions
Indigenous workers win historic stolen wages claim
The Queensland government will pay $190 million in “stolen wages” to settle a class action representing 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers.
Legal experts say the settlement will put pressure on NSW, Western Australia and the Northern Territory to strike similar agreements, with similar class-action compensation cases already underway.
More than 10,000 former workers or their descendants in Queensland will share the $190 million pool, the fifth-largest class action award made in Australia.
The Australian described the settlement as “important as the High Court’s Mabo decision on native title”.
In Queensland, the wages of indigenous men and women were paid to the state, which was supposed to hold the money in trust.
Hans Pearson, the lead applicant in the case, was seeking to recover wages earned, but alleged to have been unpaid in the period between 1939 and 1972.
Pearson believed he earned up to 7,000 pounds as a stockman during the 1950s and 60s and was planning to buy a house in North Queensland for his young family.
When he went to collect his money, he only received a fraction of that amount.
“When the police called me up to the police station, me and the wife went up and he had a cheque waiting for me for 28 pounds,” he told the ABC’s 7.30.
“I said: ‘Is this all I’m getting?’ and he said: ‘Well, that’s all you have after 10 years of working’.”