Meet Ben Schneiders

Wage theft in the age of inequality

Please join us to find out on Tuesday, 15th November at our local library in South Melbourne.

Ben is an investigative journalist at The Age. His reporting has exposed more than two dozen companies for wage underpayment, including some of the biggest names in corporate Australia. He is a Walkley Award-winning reporter, and has won the industrial relations reporting award four times.

Ben delivers a startling investigation of how some of Australia’s best-known companies have abused their power to systematically underpay their workers in recent years.

Hard Labour shows the scaled of wage-theft problem, and what needs to be done to change what is, in effect, a massive rip-off of ordinary workers.

Ben uncovers how billions of dollars have been unlawfully taken from workers at countless businesses in his latest book, ‘Hard Labour’

Rising inequality, along with climate change, are the major crises of our age, undermining democracy.

Ben has been reporting in this area for many years, and has uncovered some of the most high-profile wage theft cases. He says:

‘Over the years, I’ve received significant pushback over my wage-theft reporting — far more than I’ve received from any of my other work, which has ranged from exposing religious abuses to political corruption.

There’s been significant pressure, both legal and other kinds, put on me to stop my investigations and reports.

Regularly, I’ve been told that wage theft is due to the industrial relations system being too complex, and that the reporting is unfair to business owners. Or that it is just as common for workers to be overpaid as underpaid. (There is no evidence for this.) I’ve pushed ahead, as wage theft — to me, at least — is offensive to the idea of a fair society, breaching laws and norms about how people should be treated.

It is an assault on the idea of equality, which is a fundamental requirement of a well-functioning democracy. Left unsaid in all this pushback is the assumption that those with money and connections almost have a right to steal, unlike those with nothing, who can be jailed for far smaller thefts.’

Hard Labour: wage theft in the age of inequality’ is published by Scribe Publications

‘When confronted with the extent of the entrenched inequality outlined here, only one response from policymakers and ordinary Australians is possible: This must stop‘

– SHAUN CARNEY

‘Age journalist Ben Schneiders has broken major stories of employee underpayments involving some of the biggest names in business… It’s hard to overstate how essential Schneiders’ book is to our understanding of how workers rights and wages have been steadily eroded over decades by both Labor and Liberal governments. Hard Labour is a vital and illuminating contribution to the equality debate that deserves a wide readership.‘

– CHRIS SALIBA, Books+Publishing

‘A startling glimpse of the abuse inflicted upon Australian workers. Investigating reporting at its best!‘

– JEFF SPARROW