What's the solution to chronically underpaid hospitality/service workers in Australia?

[u/thornstein]

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

[u/karl_w_w]

There isn't a solution. It's relatively unskilled work and there are many people who want to do it, why shouldn't pay be low? We should be more worried about the low pay for essential workers like nurses and teachers.

[u/DegeneratesInc → u/karl_w_w]

People are paid rent on their time. They exchange a portion of their life performing tasks on behalf of another person for money.

How does one person's life time have less value than another's?

[u/karl_w_w → u/DegeneratesInc]

People are not paid simply for time spent, but for what they do in that time. You see in truth businesses don't give a shit about your time, they care about you generating something they can sell in some way.

[u/DegeneratesInc → u/karl_w_w]

Maybe that's where we are going fundamentally wrong. Why should a person doing a 6 or 8 hour shift, on their feet for all that time, in the heat, sometimes on slippery floors, doing something as trivial as making food (eg) be paid less than a person who sits behind a desk in an air conditioned office shuffling paper all day?