As the Christmas and new year break recedes and Australia Day approaches, once more the open wound of the hospitality game one again resurfaces: surcharges.
This time though it has hit the headlines big time thanks to the perfect storm of a silly season slow news cycle and Masterchef judge and serial restaurateur George Calombaris mouthing off about it in the Power Index (where I’m pleased to see That Jess Ho rates a mention in its analysis of the Melbourne Food Mafia).
The gist of the story is that restaurants can’t afford to stay open on Sunday and public holidays because of high penalty rates that employers to pay staff, particularly casuals.
How this affects us punters is that some restaurants and cafes surcharge on Sundays or public holidays, as I’ve written before here. And many fall foul of the law as the rules on how the surcharges should be presented on menus keep changing and appear not to be understood by many venues.
What followed were popularist stories across all media, mostly uninformed or biased on the subject of restaurant awards and Calombaris exaggerating pay rates at $40 an hour when in reality the maximum casuals would earn is $27.93 to $34.49 an hour (compared to a minimum casual hourly wage of $19.95 to $24.64 which is bugger all in the scheme of things).
It’s fallen to union economist and blogger Matt Cowgill to state the facts in this extremely well though out post, which has 80 plus comments as I write.
It is true to say that under the much maligned Workchoices the system was much more flexible for employers. There are people who prefer to work evenings and weekends and are happy to do so without being paid penalty rates.
The problem is that for every responsible employer who treats staff well there are plenty of exploitative ones that don’t in terms of pay and scheduling shifts. It is for this reason unions and awards exist, for the people who earn $15.96 an hour full time or $19.95 as casuals.
It’s not George Calombaris who is the villain here but many of the large fast food restaurants, most recently Hungry Jacks, having a terrible track record in pay rates, particularly with the young who often don’t have the confidence to speak out.
What I find most remarkable in all this is that George Calombaris paid $45,000 for a pasta extruder for his new South Yarra venture Mamma Baba.
That must be some pasta maker. You could employ a pretty good nonna to make pasta at that rate.
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