HOSPO WORKERS STRIKE BLOW AS WAGE THEFT BATTLE SURGES

Hospitality workers are rising up over “systemic” pay disputes, as Victoria passes laws threatening jail time for employers, the UWU begins legal actions, and JobKeeper rorts come to light.

Last week the Victorian Parliament passed the first laws in Australia criminalising wage theft, promising up to a decade in jail for bosses stealing from workers.

Hospo Voice, the hospitality arm of the United Workers Union, played a critical role campaigning for the Victorian laws and says it will now push for the NSW Government to follow suit.

The Federal Government has indicated it will introduce these kinds of criminal penalties, Queensland already has legislation before parliament and it is being considered in Western Australia, but to date the NSW Government has shown no interest, which has angered hospitality workers.

The new laws in Victoria mean employers that dishonestly withhold wages, super or other employee entitlements face fines of up to $198,264 for individuals, $991,320 for companies, and up to 10 years jail.

National director of the UWU and South Australian state secretary Demi Pnevmatikos spoke to the Legislative Council’s Budget & Finance Committee of “systemic, industry-wide issues” that have been made worse by coronavirus.

The Union has released the results of a national survey of 1,140 hospitality workers. It found 83 per cent have been affected by wage theft and nominated it as their top issue. There were accounts of cases with wages as low as $10 an hour.

The most common wage theft findings were: Not paid penalty rates (56 per cent of workers), Paid below the award minimum (51 per cent of workers), Paid cash-in-hand (45 per cent of workers), Stolen super (43 per cent of workers), Paid a salary but not overtime (34 per cent of workers), and Tip theft (39 per cent of workers affected).

Pnevmatikos believes hospitality workers are sometimes too scared to speak up after years of employment insecurity and exploitation, and reports thousands of incoming complaints by members in recent months.

Speaking before the South Australian parliamentary committee the UWU presented on what it describes as routine abuse of the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme by pubs, with unlawful demands made to workers. Common issues include employers electing to not apply for the scheme, and applying for JobKeeper for only certain favoured workers.

Incidents raised included a letter written by the owners of an Adelaide hotel chain telling employees they expected all those on JobKeeper to work 25 hours per week. If they could not, they could reapply for their job in September, pending submission of a formal letter of resignation.

The Union rallied around “compelling employees to work a set number of hours” or be terminated, although the Adelaide owners tried to explain a second letter did offer staff unable to meet the requirements another path of negotiation, and that the 25-hour requirement was driven by a sense of fair play to all employees, calculated as 25 hours at $30 per hour for the $750 payment.

“Why should one person do 25 hours a week … yet another person just does seven hours a week and gets the same money?” he told the ABC.

Pnevmatikos reported the union is representing a number of workers, including a woman who was stood down from an Adelaide pub in May, after waiting for two months to hear back from her employer as to whether they were eligible and applying for the JobKeeper program. She was eventually issued a termination letter, backdated to early March, before learning the pub was doing JobKeeper payments to other employees.

The hotel explained it was unable to get finance to pay all staff, but the UWU has lodged an unfair dismissal claim and the matter is already in process.

The Union has been active on social media, drawing mixed responses by its members:

“I am all for the program covering wages they would normally receive. But am livid with people with a hand out fighting for money that was never theirs. Why expect free money that you’re not prepared to work for. It was supposed to be a wage subsidy not a money making racket. And FYI I am a proud union member.”

The Fair Work Ombudsman has clarified that employers cannot push staff to increase hours to get the JobKeeper payments, which despite having been reported to have benefited around 3.5 million Australian workers, have been dubbed by employer groups as “rushed” and ill-prepared, stating the scheme lacked necessary clarity on the expectations of both employers and employees, notably the number of hours recipients are expected to work.

Ramping up the pressure, Hospo Voice has now rolled out its venue-rating site Fair Plate to Sydney.

Fair Plate has been piloted in Victoria over the last two years and close to 3,000 workers have anonymously rated current and former pub, restaurant and café employers. Some of these reviews contributed to exposing major wage theft scandals including those with celebrity chefs Shannon Bennett, George Calombaris and Neil Perry.

The Fair Plate website checks the pay slips of staff for accuracy, and includes a venue accreditation scheme so conscientious patrons can select places they have assessed pay staff properly.

Hospo Voice held multiple noisy protests outside disgraced venues across Melbourne, and union members are vowing to do the same across NSW.

“There is a national wage theft crisis and some of the worst exploitation we’ve found is in Sydney,” says Jo-anne Schofield, National President of United Workers Union, who believes wage theft is the ‘dominant business model’ in the hospitality sector and that will only change when prison time is on the table.

“It is ground zero for wage theft. But the NSW Government keeps burying its head in the sand on this issue.”

The launch of Fair Plate is part of Hospo Voice’s #RebuildHospo campaign, aiming to use the opportunity of the industry reopening post-COVID to “press reset” on the issues of wage theft, insecure work and sexual harassment.

More to come.