A Cairns tour company that shortchanged backpackers out of almost $30,000 in unpaid wages and entitlements has ignored a court order to pay them back, the Fair Work Ombudsman says.
Trek North Tours and its owner-director Leigh Alan Jorgensen were in June ordered to reimburse five foreign workers, and fined a total of $67,000, for failing to heed the ombudsman's compliance notices.
But the workers are still out of pocket, so freezing orders have been placed on the company to stop it from stripping assets or going into liquidation to avoid paying the money owed.
The ombudsman said information had recently surfaced suggesting Jorgensen was planning to move assets from Trek North to a new company.
"If the company was stripped of assets or placed into liquidation, it would have prevented the underpaid employees from being paid the money owed to them," Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James said on Thursday.
As such, the ombudsman successfully secured orders against Trek North and Jorgensen in the Federal Circuit Court preventing the company from disposing of or dealing with its assets.
The workers came from Italy, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Netherlands and worked for the company between August 2013 and April 2014.
