An 18-year-old Domino’s Pizza delivery driver has been forced to resign after sharing an online petition about the company’s low wages. Defending its “strong heritage and compliance record”, Domino’s released a statement saying that the former driver’s wages were “fully compliant with the enterprise agreement”.

The agreement Domino’s cites is a deal negotiated by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association not long after the sacked driver was born. The 15-year-old agreement pays drivers a flat base rate without casual loading, penalty rates or travel allowances. The 2001 agreement nominally expired in 2004 but has never been terminated. Domino’s drivers have not had a wage increase, besides minimum wage adjustments, since 2003.

The change.org petition, started by Redland City, Queensland, resident Keith Wade, compares the wages his 19-year-old son, QUT student Ryan Wade-McCue, received while delivering pizzas for Domino’s with the minimums set out in the Fast Food Industry Award. Domino’s wages are lower.

“I saw my son’s first payslip and I thought, how the hell is this going on?”, Keith told Red Flag. “If you look at Domino’s share price, they’re making a lot of money. The bosses and shareholders are making millions of dollars and they’re underpaying people.”

In the words of company chairperson Jack Cowin, Domino’s Pizza “continues to grow from strength to strength”. Last year the company reported a growth in net profit of 40 percent. It projects a further 20 percent jump this year, largely on the back of plans to push its delivery drivers harder. CEO Don Meij told the Australian Financial Review, “[F]aster delivery times, combined with recent digital innovations such as GPS Driver Tracker” are key to the company’s expansion plans.

Bolstering the pizza giant’s bottom line since at least the middle of 2015 has been a 10 percent Sunday “surcharge” applied to orders in regional NSW and the ACT despite the fact that the company does not pay any of its staff weekend penalty rates.  

While Domino’s fortunes surge, it is practically impossible for its delivery drivers to make a living working there. In 2015, the poverty line for a single person without dependants was $517.55 per week after tax, according to the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research.

An adult delivering pizzas at Domino’s in Queensland, where Domino’s wages are lowest, receives $14.69 an hour. Over a 38-hour week, a driver on this rate will barely scrape together an income above the poverty line. After petrol costs and a car insurance fee is deducted by Domino’s, a driver’s take home pay is considerably less.

“They say you can make money doing this job”, Ryan told Red Flag. “I’m losing money.” Domino’s has worked hard for years to keep its drivers’ wages down.

In 2009, it refused to include drivers in the national enterprise agreement it negotiated with the SDA, leaving them on the old agreement. When, in 2012, a group of Domino’s drivers tried to terminate this agreement, the company colluded with the union to block their case.   

A year later, Fair Work Australia ordered Domino’s to back pay $590,000 in wages to delivery drivers, after a “self-audit” uncovered below award wages at hundreds of outlets.

The punishment of a young worker for sharing an online petition shows how far Domino’s Pizza will go to stamp out any dissent from its workers. But the 42,000 signatures on the petition hint that collective resistance is possible.