The Government is finally addressing historical underpayments of coal industry workers but there are serious shortfalls; companies even rewarded for systematically stiffing their workers. Stephanie Train reports.
The Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 has been pitched as the solution to decades of unpaid levies and denied long service leave entitlements in Australia’s coal sector. But behind the rhetoric of providing “certainty” for employers and securing entitlements for workers, the legislation has serious enforcement shortfalls.
Concerns about the scheme’s governance are not new. Coal Long Service Leave (LSL) regulations have long been dogged by controversy. In 2025, MWM published an investigation detailing how Coal LSL, which for more than two decades was jointly run by representatives of the CFMEU and the Minerals Council, operated as a private tax collector handling billions of dollars in employer levies, largely on the basis of employer-reported data, with limited external scrutiny.
Private tax collectors. The billion-dollar secret of the coal industry
Rewarded for non-compliance
The Bill establishes a voluntary scheme allowing employers with unpaid levy liabilities to enter payment arrangements of up to six years, with the final 20% of historical debts waived once 80% is paid. This effectively rewards employers for systematically failing to pay workers the long service leave entitlements.
In her second reading speech, Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth stated that waiving 20% of the employer’s debt “represents a balanced approach intended to incentivise employer participation, protecting the viability of the scheme and supporting employers with significant levy liabilities”.
The Explanatory Memorandum also makes clear just how much discretion employers are given under the scheme.
“Under this process, employers would assess their workforce and historical records to establish which employees are or have been eligible for the Scheme. Employers would ultimately determine the scope of a payment arrangement.”
It further states,
employers are not required to capture the full extent of their liabilities:
“While it is intended that employers would include all eligible employees and all periods of qualifying service to which they have outstanding unpaid levy debts, employers would be able to choose which employees and the specific periods of service to be covered by the payment arrangement.”
The Bill allows employers to opt into the scheme simply by providing written notice, without supplying any employee or wage information at that stage, and permits employers to withdraw from the process at any time.
Employers are also not required to include all employees in an arrangement, whether draft or final.
Coal LSL allowed to make “reasonable assumptions”
The bill allows the Coal LSL Corporation to make “reasonable assumptions” when creating service records where documentation is missing or incomplete, a situation the explanatory memorandum acknowledges is widespread due to employers’ historical failure to keep or provide records.
While this provision is framed as a means to help employees access their long service leave where their employer has kept incomplete records, this gives significant power to the Corporation. At the same time, workers (many of whom may no longer be employed in the industry) may have limited ability to verify or contest the assumptions being made on their behalf.
According to the Explanatory Memorandum, if an employee has evidence that proves they were employed beyond the period declared by their employer, they “may provide this to the Corporation and request a missing service review”.
As this scheme is purely voluntary for the employers, they would not automatically be required to pay these entitlements. It would be at the discretion of Coal LSL to commence proceedings against the employer on behalf of the employee to recover the entitlement.
The employee has little to no power to compel their employer to pay them
the long service leave entitlements owed to them under this scheme
Employers “heavily involved” in consultation process
National employer body and corporate lobby group, Australian Industry Group, welcomed the government’s relief package, describing the Bill as “an extremely welcome development,” noting that many employers faced “significant financial hardship” due to uncertainty over historical levy coverage.
CEO Innex Willox said Australian Industry Group was “heavily involved” in the government’s consultation process for the Bill.
Under the Bill, employers who enter payment arrangements are effectively shielded from recovery proceedings during the arrangement period.
According to reporting in The Australian, many employers were facing “hardship and potential insolvency” if required to immediately repay historical debts in full.
As the explanatory memorandum itself acknowledges,
in some cases, employers may have over 15 years of debt.
That scale of employers failing to pay these entitlements raises a deeper question: why were employers allowed to accrue such debts without intervention in the first place?
“Almost every report was wrong”
Sam Stephens, a coal worker employed by TESA Mining, discovered significant underpayment only because he kept meticulous records.
In 2019, Stephens contacted Coal LSL after approaching his eight-year service milestone. “I rang up at the eight-year mark to access my long service leave,” he said. “They told me I had six months left, and I thought, ‘hang on, that isn’t right.’”
Stephens requested the records his employer had submitted to Coal LSL and compared them against five years of his own payslips. What he found was alarming.
“I demonstrated that my hours of work that were reported by TESA to Coal LSL every month for five years were incorrect,” Stephens said.
Out of the 56 pay slips he analysed, there was only one instance where his employer reported his hours correctly to Coal LSL. In total, his employer underreported his hours by an astonishing 2,121 hours.
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Open in new tab In November 2019, Sam attended a meeting at Coal LSL offices with employee stakeholder manager, Kylie Rooke and executive general manager, Matthew Trotter.
Coal LSL acknowledged the underpayment and adjusted his long service leave accural, but Stephens says many workers would never uncover similar discrepancies because they do not retain years of payslips.
“I told my colleagues to ring up and request their Coal LSL records as well,” he said. “But at that point, they stopped giving employees their records.”
“Coal LSL are bound by the legislation to take the word of the employer,” Stephens added.
If the employer is crooked, Coal LSL isn’t going to help you.
Department response
MWM put a detailed list of questions to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Amanda Rishworth, seeking estimates of the total value of unpaid levies, the number of affected workers and employers, why the scheme was made voluntary, and why no new enforcement or penalty mechanisms were included in the legislation.
Rather than answering those questions, the Department provided a general statement defending the Bill.
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A spokesperson said the legislation “creates a voluntary, time-limited pathway for employers to meet historical unpaid levy obligations and join the Coal LSL Scheme”, arguing this would “support timely access to long service leave entitlements for workers”.
The Department said recent Full Federal Court decisions clarifying coverage under the scheme had resulted in “a number of employers owing unpaid long service leave levies”, and that the Bill introduced “a voluntary, streamlined mechanism” to allow those employers to repay liabilities and be onboarded into the scheme.
The spokesperson defended the 20% debt waiver, saying it was “offered to encourage uptake”, and claimed safeguards were in place including Coal LSL board approval of payment arrangements, audits and structured timeframes to resolve legacy debts “while maintaining the Scheme’s integrity”.
The Department did not provide figures on the total value of unpaid levies, how many employers or workers are affected, or explain why the government opted against mandatory compliance or new enforcement powers despite acknowledging that some employers have accrued more than 15 years of unpaid debt.
A spokesperson for Minister Rishworth said the reforms would “deliver fairness and certainty for workers in the black coal mining industry and their employers”.
“The new scheme is designed to ensure eligible workers have a clear pathway to access 100% of their hard-earned long service leave entitlements in a timely fashion,” the spokesperson said.
According to the spokesperson, “the 20% discount is only there to provide an incentive for employers to participate in the voluntary scheme for legacy payments, which results in these employees getting access to 100% of their entitlements quicker”.
MWM put a separate list of questions to Coal LSL seeking clarification regarding why a significant number of records were incomplete and the mechanisms in place to ensure that employers enter payment arrangements that accurately disclose the entitlements their workers are owed. Coal LSL did not respond to the request for comment.
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