“Prison should be on the table”: Former MasterChef winner Adam Liaw slams chefs for wage theft
Former MasterChef Australia winner Adam Liaw was fired up in Monday night’s Q&A as wage theft was one of the topics amongst the panellists.
Liaw has said that there are “no excuses” for restaurants that underpay their staff. He revealed that when he started out in the restaurant industry, he had been underpaid and mentioned that jail time should be an option.
“Prison for doing large-scale systemic wage theft is certainly something that should be on the table,” he said.
“I have worked in an awful lot of restaurants. I have flipped burgers, washed dishes and cleaned toilets and in the vast majority of those jobs I was not paid an award wage,” he told Q&A guest host Fran Kelly.
“Generally, the larger the organisation, the organisations that could afford to have payroll people to keep an eye on whether everyone was being paid accordingly, were the ones that paid better.
“Mum and Dad restaurants that couldn’t keep across the complexities of the award wage system were the ones that were paying below the award wage.
“In my case that was $10 an hour and $5 an hour in some cases. But none of that is an excuse for not paying your employees properly.”
Should there be prison sentences for industrial scale underpayment of wages? #QandA pic.twitter.com/ysioSpdJsJ
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) July 29, 2019
However, Liaw was unwilling to speculate whether or not his former mentor Calombaris should be behind bars.
“Let’s not get giddy about celebrity chefs being thrown in prison because I don’t think we’re quite at the point yet.”
Labor Senator for Victoria Kimberley Kitching was firm in her stance when she was asked whether or not underpayment should equal jail time.
“Yes, I do. For the reason that it is thieving. It is thieving from people.”
She also pointed out that consumers are likely to “vote with their feet”.
“There were reports that Mr Calombaris’ restaurants weren’t being very well patronised and that is because people are going to vote with their feet. They don’t want to be associated with someone who has done that to his staff.”
Tasmanian Liberal Senator Eric Abetz was in agreement with Kitching.
“Wage theft is completely unacceptable. Stealing from employees — and that’s what it is — should be treated by the criminal law in exactly the same way as employees stealing from employers.”
“But when it’s so systemic, especially in bigger institutions, then one suspects that it might not have been an honest mistake of a Mum and Dad restaurant accidentally reading the wrong award.
“When we’re dealing with the figures that have been mentioned, clearly something is terribly wrong. Theft is theft."