Jamie’s staff gagged before they were shown the door

Employees at struggling Italian restaurants made to sign non-disclosure papers as chain shed 600 staff

JAMIE OLIVER made his staff sign gagging agreements as his restaurant empire crumbled, it has emerged.

Last September, Oliver’s previously successful Jamie’s Italian restaurants veered on the edge of bankruptcy, with the chef forced to inject £13million of his own savings into the business to stop it from going bust.

Earlier this year, the chain, which opened its first restaurant in 2008, revealed it would close 12 sites and ask for rent reductions at 11 more as part of a CVA (company voluntary arrangement) amid debts of £71.5million.

More than 600 people lost their jobs, but Oliver said that he had no choice but to restructure in order to preserve the 1,600 jobs that remain. Since 2015, when he hired Paul Hunt, his brotherin-law, to restructure his companies, there have been many redundancies. In an interview Oliver gave to the Financial Times, it has emerged that staff who were let go were expected to sign non-disclosure agreements preventing them from discussing him or members of his family in public.

After the impending restaurant closures became public knowledge last year, many anonymous sources laid the blame at Mr Hunt’s door, with former staff members labelling him “an arrogant, incompetent failure”.

One senior figure told The Times at the time: “He’s running the business into the ground, and the day he resigns the staff should have a big party. Morale is at rock bottom. There have been some wonderful women made redundant. I saw how Hunt eased them out.”

Another anonymous former worker added: “He always sits with his legs wide open and looks you up and down. He is testosterone central.”

The only critic to go on the record was Tara Donovan, the Jamie Oliver Ltd managing director from 2005-15, who told the Daily Mail she had no problems with the criticism of Mr Hunt, adding: “I think everything was published that needed to be said.”

Oliver has always robustly defended his brother-in-law, telling the FT that it was important to hire family as you could trust them not to steal – unlike waiters, he argued, who frequently pocketed bottles of wine. He said: “Look, Paul will step down at the right time. But there are times when you need family and you need the thorough trust that family brings.”

He and Hunt, who aim to make the chain profitable within four years, blame “bad leavers” for the attacks – which appear to have been mostly anonymous due to gagging orders. Oliver declined to comment on the claim. “Those allegations were vile, vindictive, vicious and baseless,” Hunt told the FT. “When people get made redundant from jobs they really worked hard in, there’s a lot of stress and a lot of anger and a lot of negativity.”