Sydney Opera House restaurant on notice over staff underpayments
The Sydney Opera House’s iconic Opera Kitchen is being monitored over what is said to be a “pattern of behaviour” after the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) found it had underpaid a visa worker minimum rates and wrongly substituted meals and drinks for penalty rates and loading.
The revelation comes as the company that owns the venue is seeking a broad enterprise agreement (EA) covering Opera Kitchen and other premium restaurants that would offset hundreds of workers’ penalty rates and loading with training, meal allowances and tips.
The FWO issued a media release this morning (August 5) saying it had put an unnamed high-profile restaurant on Sydney Harbour on notice over its workplace practices after repeated complaints by staff about being underpaid.
Workforce Daily can reveal the premium restaurant is SPV Operations Pty Ltd t/a Opera Kitchen owned by restaurateur David Wallace.
In the latest staff complaint against the restaurant, an Italian backpacker on a 417 working holiday visa was last year allegedly short-changed almost $6k while working as a kitchen hand.
The FWO said the employee was paid a flat rate of $16.50 an hour in the last six weeks of his employment – less than the minimum hourly rate.
Before then he was paid higher hourly rates but not enough to cover casual loadings and penalty rates, the FWO said.
The restaurant had argued it had an individual flexibility arrangement (IFA) with the kitchen hand that provided “benefits” in return for the $16.50 flat rate.
Those benefits included discounted staff uniforms, on-the-job training, meals and drinks.
FWO Natalie James said the business was “under the misguided belief” it could count such benefits as meeting its workplace obligations under the restaurant award.
When FWO issued a compliance notice to the restaurant to back-pay the kitchen hand $5,703 and a former waitress $386, the restaurant challenged the notice in the Federal Circuit Court.
The court granted a stay but after two months of vacated court dates the restaurant eventually agreed to send cheques for the wages and entitlements via its solicitors.
James said “a pattern of behaviour by the restaurant now means it has been targeted for ongoing education and compliance monitoring”.
Opera Kitchen makes no admissions
Lawyer Farshad Amirbeaggi of Yates Beaggi Lawyers, representing Opera Kitchen, told Workforce the restaurant had sought a stay of the compliance notice because it wanted to conduct its own assessment and disagreed with FWO over classifications and meal breaks.
He said the notice had given Opera Kitchen nine business days to comply after what had been an 18 months investigation by FWO.
However, Amirbeaggi said the cost of going through with the challenge was judged “uneconomical”, given the small amounts of money involved.
The Opera Kitchen made the payments with no admissions, he said.
A Sydney Opera House spokesperson told Workforce Daily it was investigating the matter with Opera Kitchen and was “committed to a fair working environment”.
The spokesperson said it contracted out all its food and beverage outlets to third party operators and it was the operator “who is responsible for all staff management and workplace practices”.
Source: Workplace Insight 7th September, 2015
