Long wait for underpaid staff at Calombaris restaurants
So former staff at George Calombaris' restaurant empire are still waiting to get their back pay for missing wages and entitlements.
It now turns out they have to wait until June 2018.
The shemozzle with the pay is the result of the Calombaris company Made Establishment failing to resolve the disastrous payroll bungle.
Staff are now so angry about having to wait that they are calling on the Masterchef star and his multi-millionaire business partner Radek Sali to personally settle the outstanding debts owed to staff.
The Fair Work Ombudsman was called in after an audit revealed major payroll discrepancies throughout the restaurant chain.
To clear it up, staff had been urged to submit their claims. These were supposed to be investigated and paid out by June 30, 2017.
But now Made Establishment chief executive Troy McDonagh has announced that the company has not met the deadline.
"Whilst we have made significant progress in our investigations and in compensating former employees, the total number of individual investigations we have taken to properly and accurately assess each claim is substantially greater than what we first anticipated," Mr McDonagh said in a letter to former staff.
He would not indicate how many former staff had applied to have their cases reviewed or the total number that had been compensated.
"We continue to keep the FWO and our former staff informed of our progress in processing payments to former employees. We are absolutely committed to ensuring people receive all the payments they are entitled to under the Award," Mr McDonagh told Fairfax Media.
It’s not only staff that are annoyed.
The Fair Work ombudsman is unimpressed by what they describe as "historically poor processes" for paying staff.
"While we appreciate that large-scale reconciliations can take considerable time and resources, we do not believe it is reasonable for former employees to have to wait this long to receive wages owed to them," an FWO spokesman told Fairfax Media.
8th September 2017
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