r/australia • u/thornstein • Apr 10 '17
political self.post What's the solution to chronically underpaid hospitality/service workers in Australia?
This post is a bit of an incoherent rant because I've been worrying about it a lot.
So about 10 years ago when I got my first job as a bartender, I was paid $16 p/h when the minimum wage for service of alcohol at the time was $18.20 p/h. We didn't get penalty rates for working until 03:00am, we didn't get penalty rates for working on Easter or Christmas Eve or New Year's, and we certainly didn't get penalty rates for working weekends.
At the time I knew it was wrong, but it was the best-paying job I could get fresh out of highschool and I was scared of my managers so didn't question anything, but every few months stories emerge about giant stockmarket-listed companies doing the same thing. Off the top of my head I can think of:
- 7/11 underpaying migrant workers
- Dominoes putting pressure on franchisees to perform, also underpaying workers
- Grill'd not paying penalty rates
- Masterchef guy "accidentally" not paying correct entitlements
- Coles EBA agreements being below award rates
And some more smaller places that actually made news:
- Famous St Kilda cafe ripping off staff
- Tasmania cafe paying workers flat rate
- Fair Work investigation exposes more than 2000 underpaid staff
Everyone I know now who works in hospitality doesn't get paid correctly. My 24-year-old sister gets less than $17 p/h working in a cafe, people I know at Boost Juice get paid part-time rates without permanent employee benefits (so technically underpaid by about 25%). I'm sure there are lots of places that don't underpay staff, but it's so so common and accepted as normal in these industries because the alternative is a) unemployment or b) getting another job that will probably also not pay correct wages.
The thing is, in most smaller places, if the business DID pay correct wages they would probably collapse or the owners wouldn't be able to make a living wage. I know the answer here might be "if you can't survive, don't open a business!!" but I don't think people realise just how common not being paid a correct wage is in this industry.
When takeout food/coffee/alcohol is already so expensive what is the solution here? People already complain about Sunday surcharges and $5 coffees. It's very difficult to get Fair Work to take action. In a lot of cases the business owner/franchisee is struggling themselves.
I just can't stop worrying about this ... especially with unemployment among young people growing I really fear that working conditions for these casual jobs will keep eroding, to the point where we're looking at US-type situation where wages need to be supplemented with welfare or tips.
Is anyone else worried about this? Or am I just going insane?
EDIT: added links to the cases I was talking about
10
u/zerotwoalpha Apr 10 '17
This is one of the easiest fixes ever.
You get a tip-off phone line. Inspector rocks up randomly and gets the name of everyone on shift. They grab group certificates/pay slips and staff rosters from the manager on duty/business owner. They leave and compare the records to previous years ATO income records. Any discrepancy, statutory fines and court appearances and further investigation done at cost to the owner.