Hudsons Coffee admit to underpaying hundreds of workers for years

Kelsey Wilkie
07 November 2019
Daily Mail Australia

Emirates Leisure Retail has admitted to underpaying staff for a number of years

Company owns Hudsons Coffee, Coopers Alehouse and Bistro by Wolfgang Puck

One former employee believes she is owed about $15,000 because of the error

Admission comes after Woolworths admitted to underpaying thousands of staff

A major hospitality company has admitted to underpaying hundreds of its workers.

Current and former staff of Emirates Leisure Retail received an email recently saying the company had noticed an error with its penalty rates.

The company – which is a subsidiary of the Emirates airline – has a number of brands in Australian hospitals and airports, including Hudsons Coffee, Coopers Alehouse and The Bistro by Wolfgang Puck.

Many staff have been left fuming after receiving the email, with one former employee claiming she is owed about $15,000.

‘I have worked in hospitality a long time and in my other jobs they were paying us penalty rates. But at Hudsons we were not getting that,’ she told 9 News.

‘They weren’t paying us penalty rates for the weekends, they weren’t paying us for starting before 6am in the morning, or working after 7pm at night.

The email to staff read: ‘After conducting a proactive review of our payroll, we identified a potential issue relating to the application of overtime, weekend penalty rates, and night penalty rates for staff under the Emirates Leisure Retail enterprise agreement.’

The email said HR would contact staff if a payroll analysis revealed they had been underpaid.

An Emirates Leisure Retail spokesman it is not yet known ho many employees had been affected by the issue.

He said the company had reported itself to the Fair Work Ombudsman and was working to resolve it.

Staff underpayment scandals have erupted this year with a number of big name brands.

Just last month Woolworths admitted to underpaying thousands of workers up to $5,200 each year for almost a decade.

Australia’s biggest supermarket chain failed to pay 5,700 of its salaried workers in compliance with the General Retail Industry Award as much as $300million.

Earlier in the year MasterChef judge George Calombaris’ company, Made Establishment, was slapped with a $200,000 fine after ruling workers in his restaurants were underpaid almost $8 million in wages.

The star had blamed the issue at his high profile Melbourne restaurants – including Hellenic Republic, Press Club and Gazi – on ‘historically poor processes’.