Australia’s restaurant industry is ground zero for migrant wage theft and exploitation.
This is evidenced by the Fair Work Ombudsman’s (FWO) most recent annual report, which showed a “significant increase” in wage theft, especially among migrant workers:
In 2018–19, we conducted 1256 investigations into more complex or significant matters (involving vulnerable workers, serious non-compliance and/or uncooperative employers)…
The fast food, restaurants and cafes sector continues to be a key priority. While only accounting for 7% of the labour force, the hospitality industry has consistently had the highest number of disputes we’ve assisted with for the last five financial years.
The hospitality industry accounts for 36% of all anonymous reports we received in the last financial year (more than three times higher than the second highest ranked industry) and accounted for one-quarter of all our litigations. Within this industry, the highest rates of non-compliance are found in the fast food, restaurants and cafes sector…
Intelligence continues to tell us that migrant workers are one of the most vulnerable cohorts. They’re over-represented in our disputes and compliance and enforcement outcomes.
The FWO also noted the following in December:
Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker said the fast food, restaurant and cafe sector has become a key problem area for workplace law compliance, made problematic as staff can be more vulnerable, with higher levels of workers that are young, migrants, or from non-English speaking backgrounds.
We have also witnessed a conga-line of high profile migrant wage scandals at celebrity-chef-linked restaurants like Dinner by Heston, former Masterchef judge George Calombaris’s restaurants, Shannon Bennett’s Vue de monde, and Neil Perry’s Rockpool Dining Group.
With this background in mind, it is galling to see restauranteurs demand greater taxpayer support for their bloated temporary migrant workforces:
Workers we’ve welcomed from overseas are the backbone of the industry and deserve our support, say many employees.
Vue de monde’s Hugh Allen looks around his kitchen as gleaming autumn light beams through the Rialto Tower’s 55th-floor picture windows… He’s the only Australian citizen.
“That tells the story,” he says. “Australian restaurants wouldn’t run without visa workers”…
There are around 1.1 million of them, with a large proportion in hospitality… COVID-19 has devastated the hospitality industry…
As Australia’s hospitality industry takes tentative steps to reopening, visa workers are likely to be the last ones to benefit because JobKeeper encourages employers to give shifts to local staff first…
The head chef at Surry Hills’ Hotel Harry, Gustavo Melo [said]… The kitchen is staffed with overseas workers. “Probably 80 per cent of any kitchen in Sydney is foreign people,” he says. “It’s a hard job, you work weekends, it’s physical. You don’t see many Australians”…
Brett Robinson owns Hotel Harry… Robinson is shocked that visa holders have been excluded from government assistance. “It’s unforgivable. They have no ability to earn an income and our country won’t support them”…
Australian restaurants, pubs and cafes will slip in standards if temporary visa holders aren’t there to help them reopen, cautions Michael Gavaghan, the English venue manager at The Winery in Sydney’s Surry Hills.
“Most of the labour would disappear and standards would drop,” he says. “We wouldn’t be able to deliver on guest expectations”…
“These people are the absolute fabric of Australian society,” he says. “They’re here to have a dip, build a better life for themselves. They are some of the hardest working people we have. They exhibit all the Australian values we look for and it’s staggering to say as a country that we can’t, won’t give them support” [chief executive Paul Waterson says]…
I’ve got a better idea. How about lifting the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT) wage floor from the appallingly low level of only $53,900?
The TSMIT has been set well below the median Australian wage of $1,100 per week ($57,200 p.a.):
Therefore, we have the perverse situation whereby these so-called ‘skilled’ workers can be paid $3,300 (6%) below the median income of all Australians ($57,200), which includes unskilled workers.
Accordingly, the TSMIT has incentivised employers to hire cheap migrants instead of local workers, as well as abrogated the need to provide training.
To restore integrity to Australia’s visa system, all skilled migrants (both temporary and permanent) should be required to be paid at least at the 75th percentile of earnings (preferably higher).
This would ensure that the skilled visa system is used sparingly by businesses to employ only highly skilled migrants with specialised skills, not abused by businesses to undercut local workers and eliminate the need for training.
