Hospitality sector calls for changes to ‘clunky’ awards
The hospitality sector is calling for an overhaul to the award system in an effort to stamp out undo complexity and "unintentional underpayments" ahead of talks with unions about industrial relations changes to boost jobs during the recovery from Covid-19 restrictions.
Restaurant & Catering Association chief executive Wes Lambert said restaurants wanted to treat chefs "as a profession" and look at award conditions that require them to pay them full rates, including overtime, when they were practicing their trade in the kitchen after a shift or otherwise.
"Where else are you going to practice if not the kitchen? And you're not making food for your employer, you're just practicing," he said.
"We need some flexibility to allow training and education so chefs can practice their profession in a way that does not onerously cause excessive payroll to businesses affected by Covid-19 and when we have a skills shortage and we need as many qualified and skills chefs as possible to recover the economy."
Lambert also said the complexity of requirements around staff meal breaks also had to be looked at.
"These have led to unintentional underpayments and are not practical for operations for restaurants," he said.
Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter said last week the "clunky" hospitality award should be addressed in the upcoming discussions, with the Australian Hotels Association (AHA) citing the "600" different pay rates in the hospitality industry that need to be simplified.
"We have all of those classifications and then you've got to multiply it by all the days and times in the week, if it's before 8am or before 6pm, or if it's overtime," said AHA chief executive Stephen Ferguson.
"People should get paid a fair day's wage for a fair day's work but our award is 100 pages long. Our argument is it should be easy to read. You can't imagine a 17-year-old school leaver trying to look at their award and understand what their entitlements are."
Sheridan Randall, 1st June 2020
