Hospitality workers say layoffs ‘cold’

AUCKLAND: Hospitality chain the Good Group — owner of upmarket waterfront restaurants such as Botswana Butchery and White & Wongs — has made half of its more than 300 staff redundant amid the Covid19 crisis.

Its distraught former workers say they feel let down by the decision, and that getting rid of them partway through the 12week wage subsidy period was ‘‘cold’’.

Good Group says the pandemic has decimated its business, and it kept as many staff as it could.

Most of the 150 affected staff — based at 14 venues in Auckland and Queenstown — are migrant workers, and are now unable to get new jobs because their visas are invalid. They do not qualify for welfare.

‘‘Although people are saying ‘go home’ we don’t have that option. If I want to get to Argentina right now, I’ll have to build a boat and sail there,’’ Camila Rouco Oliva (28), who was a waitress at White & Wong’s in Queenstown, said.

Eight former workers contacted the Herald with complaints about the Good Group’s process.

They said they were unable to give feedback on the redundancy proposals given the short timeframe, and that decisions about why certain people kept their jobs while others were cut were not explained.

They also raised concerns about their wage subsidy payments. Documents show the group took the subsidy for 345 staff, at a total of $2.3 million.

Payslips show the former workers received four weeks of the subsidy, at a net rate of $585 per week. Their final week they were paid for only three days and payments ended the day of their redundancy.

Employers who took the subsidy early — such as Good Group, which applied on March 20 — were at that time required to undertake to use their best endeavours to retain their employees named in the application on at least 80% of their regular income for the period of the subsidy.

That rule has since been updated so that employers must retain the relevant employees in employment if they take the subsidy.

Chloe AnnKing, who runs the Raise the Bar campaign to improve hospitality workers’ conditions, said even if Good Group pays back the extra subsidy money, its decision seemed to her to go against statutory good faith provisions.

Owner of Good Group, Russell Gray said it had done everything it could to keep as many staff as possible.

Decisions were based on feedback from venue managers as to who they believed were the best skilled people to run businesses.

He did not answer questions about whether the subsidy for the redundant staff would be paid back to the Government, saying only that Good Group’s total staff costs paid during the period of the subsidy far exceed the total amount of wage subsidies received. — The New Zealand Herald