Rather than providing training to local workers or offering decent rates of pay, Australia’s hospitality sector is spending thousands of dollars scouring the world for cheap migrant workers to exploit [my emphasis]:
Melbourne restaurant operators who have struggled to find local workers are heading overseas to hire staff with some flying as far as to Dubai to recruit chefs…
Simon Blacher, co-owner of Commune Group, which operates Tokyo Tina, Firebird, Moonhouse and Hanoi Hannah, hired more than 30 chefs at a Dubai jobs fair at a cost of about $8000 each to cover visas and processing fees…
Chris Lucas’ Lucas Group, which operates restaurants including Chin Chin and Society, also hired 30 staff from a Dubai jobs fair along with recruiting from Asia and New Zealand…
Earlier this year Hunter St Hospitality, the company behind Rockpool, Spice Temple, Munich Brauhaus and The Bavarian, took on 125 recruits from the Middle East, Europe and the United States through a three-week trip at a cost of $10,000 to $20,000 per employee which included visas, application costs, flights and accommodation…
“The problem is not being solved by the slow trickle of working holidaymakers, international students and skilled migrants, and certainly with a nearly 70 per cent dropout rate in food trades in TAFE there’s no silver bullet to solving the problem,” [Australian Foodservice Advocacy Body] director Wes Lambert said. “Many businesses are travelling around the world to recruit their own staff to try to speed up the process.”
Lambert said the government’s push to bring more skilled workers into Australia was proceeding at “a snail’s pace” and a proposal to increase the skilled immigration cap from 160,000 to 200,000 was a positive move but would not solve problems around red tape, including slow visa processing times.
“The food service industry is calling upon the government not only to lift the cap, but also to remove roadblocks like the strict English tests and the prohibitively high fees to sponsor professionals,” he said.
So it’s cheaper to fly around the world and bring back people from Dubai than it is to train locals?
“Nearly 70 per cent dropout rate in food trades in TAFE”. Well that is a good indication that there is something seriously wrong with the employment conditions in hospitality, where wage theft runs rampant.
“The government’s push to bring more skilled workers into Australia was proceeding at ‘a snail’s pace'” . That’s good. Australia doesn’t have the necessary housing for the people already living in Australia and the cost of living for the basics of life is far too high for those on the minimum (full time) wage.
The hospitality sector needs to stop blaming everyone else and stop demanding governments provide them with cheap and easy staffing solutions.
There are plenty of people that would work for the sector if it offered appropriate remuneration/superannuation, secure, part-time or full time positions and career paths/apprenticeships for those who want them.
Instead, the sector offers the poorest rates of pay in the nation by a very wide margin and is ground zero for wage theft.
Hospitality is the lowest paying industry in Australia.
The median weekly pay across the Food & Accommodation industry was only $500 per week in August 2021, little changed from 2015.
In particular, cooks and chefs – the focus of the overseas recruitment drive – are notoriously poorly paid. According to the ABS, chef annual average earnings (AAE) were only $57,704 in 2018, whereas cooks earned a pitiful $40,596.40. This compares poorly against AAE of $67,012 for all occupations in 2018:
Cooks & chefs are notoriously underpaid.
The problem lies with the hospitality employers themselves, and they should stop expecting the government to fix it for them by opening the immigration tap even wider.
Hospitality employers spent decades offering insecure, casual positions that required their staff to work multiple jobs, wage theft is common, and they provided terrible working conditions.
As long as hospitality continues to offer poor wages and conditions, labour shortages will remain. It is called a “labour market” for a reason – it too is subject to the laws of supply and demand.
The problem with Australia’s “skilled visa” system is really being exposed here. It is primarily used to hire workers at a lower wage than locals are willing to work for. It’s that simple.
Any sector that relies on cheap exploitable migrant labour to thrive is not a sustainable industry. It needs fundamental structural reform.
The below comment from “Soapbox” in the Fairfax article quoted above – nicely encapsulates the issue:
I’m retired now but cooking (Chef is a position in a kitchen, not a trade) is my trade, when I undertook my apprenticeship in the 1970’s we were the second highest paid trade in Victoria, only surpassed by aviation mechanics. Over time I experienced declining wages, declining standards of restaurant proprietors ( in it for the money, not as a passion) and a general dumbing down of the industry exacerbated by “skilled” visa schemes for “qualified” cooks that couldn’t boil water but were willing to work at a massive discount so they could get permanent residency. The hours are toxic and so too is the pay and the industry is over subscribed and offers mostly ordinary pub food. Going to Dubai won’t fix anything.
Giving the hospitality industry greater access to foreign workers will only worsen the systemic exploitation already prevalent, keeping wages low and denying local workers employment opportunities and a living wage.
Politicians must stop pandering to vested interests like the Australian Foodservice Advocacy Body. Otherwise, Australian wage growth will remain stunted and exploitation will continue to run rife.
