Long before the fact that Woolworths had underpaid staff to the extent of a whopping $300million , we were told by a northern source that wage theft was going to become a big issue . Sure did . We were told that it was so widespread there would be amazing revelations about the extent of the problem . All kinds of excuses were being offered by companies for the failure , including one by a brothel which said it was so busy there was not enough time to do the paperwork to make sure staff got the proper pay. It would seem that brothels are a boom industry , people run off their feet trying to keep up with the book keeping.