Wagamama staff out of pocket

Staff have been left thousands of dollars out of pocket after the demise of Asian-fusion restaurant Wagamama last month.

The global chain had a restaurant in Wellington and three in Auckland before going into receivership in July.

The Newmarket, Sylvia Park and New Lynn restaurants have closed, but the Wellington restaurant had initially rebranded to Mama Noodle House.

It closed its doors less than a month after the rebranding.

The general manager of the restaurant, Soraya Edwards, said she was owed at least $6000.

Collectively, staff were owed upwards of $50,000, Edwards said.

This figure could go up depending on whether taxes and student loans had been paid, she said. ‘‘I have called IRD to find out, but they couldn’t tell me,’’ she said.

The staff at the Wellington restaurant were given very little notice that they were being made redundant after going through the rebranding process.

‘‘We rebranded the whole restaurant then, boom, redundancy came out of nowhere,’’ Edwards said.

‘‘My boss gave me a text and that was it.’’

None of the staff was given holiday pay, days in lieu or promised bonuses, she said.

The receivership had been sudden and difficult for staff.

‘‘There was no notice when it former general manager of Wagamama in Wellington

came to the whole receivership process. It was just, there was no work, that’s it. The shifts you were rostered on, nope.’’

Edwards had worked on and off for the restaurant’s owner since 2003.

Edwards said she initially found out about the rebranding from a member of the public during a Saturday night shift.

‘‘ . . . someone had seen the website that said, ‘Wagamama has left the country’.

‘‘That’s the first I heard about it,’’ she said. ‘‘I had to ring the boss and find out what was going on. It was not cool.’’

Despite little communication from head office during the rocky final month, her boss had reassured her that everything was fine.

She said the staff all felt exploited through the whole process. ‘‘Most hospo workers live week to week. It’s a lot of money,’’ she said.

It was all incredibly disappointing, Edwards said. She had been loyal to the company and sacrificed time with her dying mother to come back to work.

Her mother died in December from pancreatic cancer.

‘‘The whole thing is pretty messy. It sucks, we worked really hard,’’ she said

‘‘We also convinced staff we were going to be OK, but in the end we weren’t. I look like an idiot, I look like a fool.’’

Attempts to contact the receiver and the director of the company were unsuccessful.

Workers advocate Chloe AnnKing said this sort of thing was common.

‘‘It is pretty much a business model in hospitality.’’

She said she received emails daily from workers who needed help with unfair deductions from their wages, who were not being paid or their KiwiSaver had not been paid or they were being docked for breaks they had not taken.

‘‘Employment law is barely enforced in the hospitality industry. There are no unions in there. A lot of workers also just don’t know. They know it isn’t right but they don’t know how to fight it or stand up to their bosses,’’ Ann-King said.

‘‘Redundancy came out of nowhere . . . My boss gave me a text and that was it.’’ Soraya Edwards