Worker discontent is brewing at one of Australia’s most successful burger chains, with concerns about low wages and poor hygiene growing | INVESTIGATION by adele_ferguson
Workers are gearing up to renegotiate the current enterprise agreement, which has been described as "highly exploitative" by a leading workplace lawyer. That agreement was signed in 2015 and removes penalty rates for weekends, public holidays and work performed after 9pm on weekdays. It restricts overtime payments and provides little room for annual pay rises.
The business is thriving on many measures. Most outlets are owned by Grill’d, which turns over about $370 million annually and last year made a profit approaching $45 million before paying interest or tax. Those figures make Crowe worthy of inclusion on the nation’s rich lists.Patrick Stevenson, a 23-year-old law student at Monash University, agreed to speak out against the company because he believes Grill'd doesn’t play fair.
"Myself and many other co-workers that have left share the belief that if you can survive Grill’d, you can survive anything."Grill'd statement In a statement, it said it was central to its values that "we do our best to make sure that our people, including employees and franchise partners, feel valued and are treated equitably and properly".
Grill’d conceded in the statement that it didn't always get things right. "On such a journey, there will also be isolated outlier incidents when things don’t go to plan, but we have always worked to make it right by our people, our suppliers, our franchise partners and our customers," it said.One of the worst areas for things to go wrong for a food business is food safety.
One internal audit revealed that a used Band-Aid had been found in a cutlery holder and there was no evidence of team members washing hands during food preparation and service, heightening the risk of microbiological contamination. In a statement, Grill'd said it treated health and safety as an upmost priority. "Grill'd has made significant investments in systems, processes and people to ensure our food safety and team safety is best practice in our industry.Fame and fortunemagazine’s top 50 eligible bachelors for 2005, a rich man, with an estimated wealth of more than $450 million since the burger enterprise opened in 2004.
He used his marketing background to develop the name, the concept and design. But his biggest strength was understanding real estate and opening Grill’d in the right locations. Company documents reveal that at least one Grill’d company-owned restaurant paid an average wage per hour of $14.16 over the five months to October 31, 2019. The figure included team leaders and trainees, putting the restaurant on an extremely low labour cost to sales ratio of 17.8 per cent.
"When the restaurant transferred ownership from being a franchised store to corporate, the number of people on each shift was cut back, sometimes from six or eight people to four people doing the same job, which resulted in a lot of stress," he said. In 2012, a senior executive found that at least one restaurant between 2007 and 2012 didn’t have an employment agreement in place, meaning management should have reverted to the award, requiring five years of back-pay to the underpaid staff.
Grill’d is the latest food network to have its wage structure criticised. It comes as the government is drafting a bill to criminalise wage underpayment and has flagged plans to simplify the country’s award system, particularly workplace arrangements in the hospitality and retail sectors.Julie Peel, whose daughter worked at the Macquarie Centre restaurant in Sydney's North Ryde, said she and her colleagues were pressured to work outside the enterprise agreement.
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