Australia’s top restaurants and cafes are facing critical skills shortages that have forced many to scale back on opening hours and dining capacity, as leading industry figures warn the entire sector’s pandemic recovery is at risk without immediate access to a foreign workforce.
But several industry figures believe the high-end dining experience of pre-COVID may no longer be as accessible to Australians, with restaurants and cafes in capital cities forced to alter their business models by closing their doors mid-week for lunch and dinners and potentially for weeks on end this winter to give staff much-needed time off.
“We have found that the best way to maximise success in new venues is to recruit, relocate and sponsor highly-skilled, specialised chefs who have worked in their area of expertise for many, many years and who bring unparalleled skills to our country,” Mr Hemmes said.“We then build the business around the chefs, creating not only more jobs for direct employees within that new venue, but also the flow-on effects to suppliers.
“With the traditional seasonal workforce of working holidaymakers and international students unavailable to fill the workforce gap, the sector desperately needs a workforce pipeline to enable recovery and eventually international reopening,” Mr Hart said.
Translation, Fuck I have to pay decent wages.
Pay a livable wage , greedy 🐷🐷🐷
Provide the incentive of generous wages and benefits. The demands for 'foreign' workers has destroyed the balance between employer and employee in Australia and COVID is revealing this for the deliberate suppression of fair wages that it has been and still is.
Maybe Justin Hemmes can pay his staff a bit more and recover the costs by hosting less Liberal Party fundraisers
Justin Hemmes 🤮
'Skill shortages' When I was young, people learnt on the job. Certificates were not required for cafes, retail, reception, gardening, cleaning...
Did you interview a billionaire about why no one wants to take shit pay, shit hours and shit conditions to help enrich him further? ThisIsNotJournalism
Why is it that is there is a shortage of lawyers or bankers everyone says they should be paid more, but if their is a shortage of hospitality people, you cry out for an underclass? /2
How much skill does it take to float a truffle in a sea of raspberry coulis and charge $60 for it?
LNP govt stuffed up vaccine rollout badly, yet The Age/9fax running a campaign to open up. Warnings of becoming an international pariah, pleas for foreign workers (aka slave wages & conditions), and having to 'live with the virus' all part of IPA/LNP's crony agenda. auspol
According to the prevailing economic market doctrine, a labour shortage will lead to increased wages as employers compete for scarce skilled workers. What a load of BS. Most small businesses would rather close than pay one cent extra. What they want is cheap exploitable workers.
Lol, poor old Justin ripped his staff off for years. BooHoo
That’s because places like Maccas pays better and has more benefits than the top restaurants. Honestly most people would rather take a supermarket job over a restaurant job because the conditions and pay is better.
TAFE pumps out thousands of cooking class idiots.... there is no shortage at all
What utter rubbish. What is our unemployment rate? Aren’t some of those people smart enough to work in a restaurant? Can’t they go to tafe to skill up? ..oh, right...
Bullshit! Pay and conditions, mate, that's the reason for your 'skills shortage'!
Slave labour you mean?
its not skills shortage. its ppl having enough! we took the brunt of covid lockdowns, PLUS chefs & hospitality staff are treated like cattle & paid a fraction of their worth. after more than 2 decades in hospitality best thing i ever did was leave.
Geez maybe Tafe for training and then properly paid secure jobs might be the idea?
Industries built on exploitation need foreigners to continue exploitation. These industries need to die if they can only survive by continued exploitation.
Free market economy at play? Bullshit, just greedy owners who can't make it work without exploiting workers through uncompetitively low wages! Free market my arse! It's 'bring the Third World here'.
Plenty of unemployed in Australia but maybe they want a fair pay for a fair day's work ?
Why not train a local workforce?
Who'd want to work for that prick anyway.
Here’s an idea - PAY AUSTRALIAN WORKERS A DECENT WAGE!!! auspol
Seems more like an AUSTRALIAN TRAINING SKILLS ISSUE!!
We need Int’l borders open inbound/outbound. Can’t grow an economy without tourism and immigration. Anyone thinks otherwise has been fooled.
Simple - pay Australians a good wage and they will come to work - if not getting what is deserved through poor business planning. Caught out trying to exploit people!
What a load of rubbish it’s all about greed, they actually want international students back who work for cheap wages or cash in hand.
raywilton4 Even if we had a foreign workforce coming in, where are they going to live? There is a rental shortage everywhere. Or do these top restaurant owners have accomodation that they will charge too $ to rent to their workers?
When hiring they are supposed to accept the best candidate(s) for the job(s). I don't see critical skills shortage there except for the fact that you don't want to pay even on award wages. You like to run your business on a slave labour in which, yes, you have a shortage of.
How about paying employees properly?
Pay people proper wages. Simple as that.
Bollocks, import cheap labour to prop up poor wages and conditions. What happened to “ let the market decide”?
Shortage of highly exploitable labour...... is what these hospitality moguls are whinging about.
Those damned Aussie kids who know their rights & entitlements in an Aussie workplace are spoiling the hospitality sector! sarcasm
Boo fucking hoo! Pay a decent wage.
The why don’t we have a smaller unemployment problem? There are people out there who need jobs.
it should read : 'without access to foreign university students'.
'Foreign workforce' is code for 'Cheap labour' something qll business loves in this country especially under this gov
Pay a decent wage to the 'skilled' workers you need and you will have no trouble getting staff. Also give them 8 hour shifts, not split shifts of 4 hours between lunch and dinner. But 457's don't complain and work for less don't they....
From the same mob who campaigned for cuts in penalty rates, underpay staff industry wide & did not care enough about any of them to put them on jobkeeper
I want cheap labour. $ I underpay staff $ I entertain Liberals at vaucluse $ i am friends with the coppers.$ I grabbed job seeker. $ who am i ?
Pay workers a proper wage!
They take away penalty rates and wonder why they can’t get staff I have zero pity for these people
Do they not understand capitalism? If they want skilled staff they need to compete in the marketplace, which might mean paying more to attract them.
You fuckinf under pay people that's why. And now we don't have Indians coming, we are fucked
Yeah it's JobSeekers fault.... In other news, imagine what JobKeeper monies that ensured Executives got their bonuses and companies increased their dividends could have achieved if we were not in the politics of envy'?
Maybe if they paid people.
So who dobs in the restaurants for not accepting candidates?
Please talk to a restauranteur who isn't an entitled dipshit and can attract staff and keep them. They exist. They even tend to charge the same prices as the frauds that end up in these articles
Been trying to find a manager since we opened post lockdown.
Bullshit, it’s rent seeking pure and simple. What they really mean is they are facing a critical shortage of slave labour to wage theft that will keep quiet for fear of loosing their visas auspol auspol2021
Theme?
No more desperate international students to exploit so all of a sudden you can’t run your restaurant? That’s sad for you. If only there was a simple, ethical fix that would attract more staff
Imagine if a lot of Australians would get off their arses, stop receiving benefits, learn skills and have a new job....
How about an honest survey on what Hospitality venues spend on Professional development? I would be willing to bet that 90% of hospitality businesses had absolutely no Professional development training in their yearly budgets. None at all!
the most exploitative industry ever. If they paid properly, had proper working conditions, they'd be overwhelmed with people wanting work. NO-ONE wants to be a slave. STOP them exploiting poor people from other countries and eroding OUR rights!
Pure & utter garbage.They want 451 Visas to short change, rip off, pay below award wages.Invest in your workforce Australia instead of acting like that Master Chef creep done for $7million in wage theft.That's all you're after - below award wages, foreigners who work 90 hr weeks
I am a chef by trade and changed career paths when penalty rates were lowered...will never work as a chef again due to low wages, penalty rates and split shifts...I know many chefs who feel the same...
Have they tried offering decent wages and conditions? Maybe training people to do the job? Or is the business only profitable if workers can be threatened with losing their visa if they won't accept whatever they're offered?
Is this the same Justin Hemmes who was ripping off his workers? 🤔
“Australia’s top restaurants and cafes” What bollocks. Surely “Australia’s top restaurants and cafes” can attract good staff with top wages and conditions? Surely it’s Australia’s bottom restaurants and cafes that are struggling to find staff?
They can train their own staff. Why do we have to do it for them?
Brilliant idea for Rob Harris to seek a whinge & a whine from Justin Hemmes. ■Justin Hemmes has lost a key part of his defence against a class action that could force his Merivale empire to back pay workers as much as $129 million■
Employ young people and teach them , they will do magic and come up with new ideas.
There was a time when 'top restaurants' and cafes were prepared to invest in training staff.
Well this will teach them for banking on a business model that relies on cheap overseas labour rather than actually paying locals decent wages and offering permanent instead of work..
Cutting penalty rates caused people to seek better-paying jobs, so now there's a shortage of local workers. Think I see a solution...
Nothing to do with low wages, wage theft, either 50 hour weeks, split shifts or casual, no penalties ...... lack of ongoing training opportunities, no security..... How are foreign workers going to fix all that?
Hmmm. I wonder if that has anything to do with the rampant wage theft in the industry? Poorly paid, insecure employment...I wonder what they could do to make it more appealing to work in the industry 🧐? Truly , do better.
Yes. Without the ability to exploit foreign workers it must be hard to balance the books
Ah, all the locals saying give us the jobs and all. Sure, how is it that when you go to the pub the chef is most likely to be someone on a sponsored visa? How come an aussie didn't get the job? *Cough* dole bludger *cough*
Erhh have they tried paying a wage. It just might work, other businesses seem to attack workers.
Supply and demand, slaver.
Bullshit. Restaurants and cafes just need to assess applications from people who applied
Start paying proper wages & providing reasonable working conditions. Then you might have a shot at attracting more people into the industry.
nobby15 An industry which has exploited their staff and who charge exhorbitant prices for very beige unimaginative food
'Restaurant owners who vote Coalition because they encourage wage theft and ripping off foreigners suddenly realise the party they vote for also killed TAFE, apprenticeships & workplace training, so they need their foreigners back,' is a little long for a headline, but accurate.
Yeah their owners lack the critical wage paying skills needed to attract workers.
Train locals. Employ locals.
Maybe blame the Liberals for refunding Tafe, what a load of shit
Bosh. Just pay correctly and improve conditions.
Pay more
The problem is that the cafes and restaurants in Melbourne are on old Collective Agreements from the Howard WorkChoices era and havent had them cancelled to put workers on an Award or EBA that pays penalty rates
There isn’t enough poor people being imported for this rich blokes kid to exploit. Oh the humanity!!!!!
After years of listening to the bullshit spouted by ultra conservatives at the IPA babbling on about how the market will sort out wages, well guess what? That day is here If you pay shit wages, no one will work for you Much to the dismay of those same conservatives
Translation: our current business model is unsustainable unless we can exploit foreign workers, by paying them below award wages
gimmie more coolies
Don’t they mean access to cheap labor.
Millionaires and third world immigrants working together to lower wages! 🤝
So the Cargo Cult business model is proving to be unsustainable?... interesting. Who would have guessed it?
Years of liberal party rorting & looting has destroyed this country. We’ll never recover at this rate.
Or they could… I don’t know… offer higher wages….
Here is a suggestion pay a fair wage. not just a top up of mum & dad back home. in the old countries train & retain your work force. with respect & living wages.. OR GO out of Business The choice is yours
Maybe they should start paying there staff correctly
Ahhhh bless
We have plenty of unemployed. TRAIN THEM!
An industry notorious for wage theft and slave labour hours is having difficulty hiring staff after a lifer changing pandemic. My heart bleeds for these millionaire grifters.
This is bullshit, owners should pay full wages and penalties or get out of the business
HearGaza GazaUnderAttack savepalestinians
“Skills shortages” are an excuse to not pay people decently and you know it