Culture

A Former Chin Chin Bartender Says The Restaurant Underpaid Staff

"If bosses steal from us, all they have to do is pay it back, if they’re ever caught. How is that fair?"

by Sam Langford  20 November 2017
chin chin

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A former employee of popular Melbourne restaurant Chin Chin is taking the business to court over alleged wage theft, claiming staff were regularly made to work 10-12 hours of overtime per week without pay. She’s also started a petition calling for wage theft to be made a criminal offence with real consequences.

Sorcha Harrop, 24, was a bartender at Chin Chin, which has just opened a new restaurant in Sydney, for around nine months. She alleges that during that time she was underpaid by over $9000 in lost wages and superannuation. According to Harrop, staff at Chin Chin were routinely expected to work upwards of 50 hours a week, but were only ever paid for 38.

“I’ve been in hospitality for over six years,” Harrop said outside Melbourne Magistrates’ Court today. “Having been in the industry for so long I knew that something was up when I was becoming incredibly sick and unable to keep up with the standard they expected from everyone.”

“When everybody is overworked and unhappy and expected to meet that standard every day, it’s unacceptable. And to walk away with over 12 hours every week of free labour — you’re not just taking work home with you, you are there making drinks, serving food, working your arse off for someone who isn’t going to pay you. It needs to change, and I’m happy to stand here and represent all those people that I know are in there.”

Harrop described a kind of “sheep syndrome” that emerged where staff thought that doing unpaid overtime was normal or “how the industry works”. She said she personally “approached them several times, including in the leaving interview, and they’d blow it off, or they’d say, y’know, ‘maybe you should do something else, you should get another job’. But I think I can say I was pretty alright at my job, and I know a lot of people who were too, and they were getting incredibly sick and overworked.”

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“We’re living in Melbourne, the capital of hospitality in Australia. How can we have so many restaurants with such a high standard of hospitality and yet not pay people properly?”

Chin Chin’s management has denied Harrop’s claims, telling the Herald Sun that they have been attempting to settle the case.

“We have been dealing with Sorcha and her allegations since immediately after we were made aware of them,” Chin Chin owner Chris Lucas said. “I am committed to ensuring The Lucas Group’s valued employees are paid correctly and within the current emp­loyment laws.”

Protestors and union representatives rallied outside both the Magistrates’ Court and Chin Chin today with banners reading “Take Wage Theft Off The Menu”, in a show of solidarity with Harrop. Almost 7,000 people have signed the petition to criminalise wage theft, which points out that “if workers stole from the till, we could go to jail. But if bosses steal from us, all they have to do is pay it back, if they’re ever caught. How is that fair?”

This is far from the first time allegations of wage theft have been made against a popular Australian restaurant. Earlier this year, celebrity chef George Calombaris’s restaurants had underpaid 160 employees for up to six years, to the tune of $2.6 million.

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Feature image via United Voice and Megaphone.org.au