As an employment specialist, dedicated to finding people work, I hate the fact many hospitality employers don’t advertise their pay rate because they’re ripping off their staff.

Wage theft is at epidemic proportions (no pun intended). People are frightened to speak up because they fear they will lose their job.

There are roughly 2.3 million casual workers in Australia who don’t get paid leave entitlements, such as holiday and sick leave.

They’re meant to receive a casual loading of about 20-25 per cent paid (depending on the award) as compensation for not having leave entitlements.

A large number of ‘casual’ workers are also working full-time hours. It’s more accurate to call them ‘leave deprived’.

Only about half of these ‘leave-deprived’ employees receive the casual loading.

There hasn’t been an increase in real wages for almost eight years (see previous blog post).

Insecure work is increasing and people are feeling more insecure.

So they hold on to their job, even if they are being underpaid, even if there is no job security.

Many of the so called ‘happy face’ media stories about the rise in advertised jobs, are in low-paid jobs. Tens of thousands of these were lost due to the Covid lockdowns, so now some are coming back.