WIN! In May Hospo Voice exposed the La La Bar Group, revealing workers were being paid below award wages in envelopes stuffed with cash.
On 31 July six bars in Chapel Street run by this group were raided by the watchdog.
Step by step, Hospo Voice members are changing our industry.
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The La La Bar Group is a wage theft empire. Workers across multiple La La Bar Group venues are being paid in cash. They are paid below-Award wages and are not paid penalty rates.
Leaked emails indicate they run two sets of books. Typically, businesses do this to avoid paying award pay rates and to evade tax.
All eight La La Bar Group venues need to be raided, along with every other venue uncovered in Hospo Voice’s investigation of wage theft in Chapel Street.
Why is this important?
I am a bartender at a La La Bar Group venue on Chapel Street and they are stealing about $16,000 (plus super) from me each year I work on weekends and into the early hours of the morning but all I’ve ever got was a flat rate, no penalty rates. All given to me in an envelope stuffed with cash.
La La are a big player. They’ve got about 100 staff. They own seven bars on Chapel Street and across Melbourne, including Blue Bar, Electric Ladyland, Holy Grail, Wonderland, Lucky Liquor and La La Land.
$16,000 is a huge amount of money. Long term employees I work with would have had this amount money stolen from them, year in, year out. I don’t understand how a company of this size keeps getting away with stealing so much money from its workers.
What’s clear is that the current rules are a joke. And what has the watchdog done to enforce those rules? Nothing that I can see, where I work, or any of the venues in Chapel Street, where people are working for as little $10 per hour.
I feel like we’ve been left to fend for ourselves by this government. It’s wrong. Hospo workers deserve a government that will come down on wage thieves like a ton of bricks.
