A former human resources manager for Australia's biggest solar panel distributor is accusing the company of underpaying its staff.
Liesa Oldfield is taking court action against One Stop Warehouse, its founder and chief executive, Anson Zhang, and manager Jeffrey Wu for her alleged forced resignation in November 2018, leading to a loss of income and "hurt and humiliation".
One Stop Warehouse is a national company with offices in all state capitals and at the time was one of Australia's fastest-growing private companies.
Mr Zhang won a 2019 Australian Young Entrepreneur Award.
According to a judgment on a related application before the Federal Circuit Court in Brisbane, Ms Oldfield worked for the company for 19 months as both a human resource officer and manager.
The judgment notes that during her time at the company, she formed the view that One Stop Warehouse "underpaid its staff and did not pay penalty rates or overtime rates, nor did it pay the basic award rate of pay".
Ms Oldfield, according to her statement of claim, reported her conclusions to company management "in an effort to have the matters of concern to her rectified".
She further claimed the workplace "was visited by inspectors from the Department of Work Health and Safety and it was found to be non-compliant in a number of respects".
Ms Oldfield said she was "obstructed" by a person involved in the management of the company from rectifying these problems, told she was "unstable", she did not fit the "culture" of the business, and had core duties and responsibilities taken away from her.
She claimed she "was uncomfortable working for the company" and was in effect forced to resign "to protect myself from exposure to liability for the misconduct of Anson [Zhang] Jeff [Wu] and the first respondent [One Stop Warehouse] for intentionally underpaying OSW Employees in breach of the law when they knew better".
The company denies the accuracy of Ms Oldfield's conclusions and the allegation it was underpaying employees and it sought to strike out Ms Oldfield's claim for $126,000 in compensation for loss of income, medical costs and "hurt and humiliation".
In dismissing the company's application, Justice Michael Jarrett decided to let the case go ahead, noting: "I cannot be satisfied that her claim generally has no reasonable prospects of success."
"Her resignation might be seen as a reasonable and foreseeable consequence of the adverse action taken against her," Justice Jarett said.
"I cannot accept the respondents' argument that merely because the applicant chose to resign her employment, she has no reasonable prospect of successfully pursuing a claim for economic loss."
But the judge also noted: "That is not to say that her case is not without significant difficulty."
A spokesperson for One Stop warehouse said the company has engaged an external party to conduct a full audit.
"If we have made a mistake, we will fix it immediately, and pay people their entitlements plus interest," the spokesperson said.
"Trust and accountability are key pillars of our company. We are committed to best business practices based on the final audits of the company."
