Meet the bar owner who's signed up for a Fair Pay Agreement for hospo workers

Friday, 18 November 2022

Not all employers are opposed to Fair Pay Agreements. (First published 17/11/22)

Renwick Boon, co-owner of Wellington cocktail bar Night Flower, fears the city’s vibrant restaurant and nightlife scene will lose some of its lustre if pay and conditions for hospitality workers don’t improve.

“We will rely on a less skilled or shorthand workforce, and we won't keep growing this beautiful, creative restaurant and cafe industry,” he says.

“We have these amazing people doing amazing things, and we quite often see them just disappearing off to Melbourne.”

Boon added his signature to a union demand for a Fair Pay Agreement for hospitality workers on Tuesday, saying a deal on minimum pay and conditions would benefit the whole industry.

* Fair pay roadshow explaining ins and outs of new bargaining law

Night Flower co-owner Renwick Boon says hospitality workers need to be able to live in Wellington if the city is going to thrive.

* Cheat sheet: Fair Pay Act passed by Parliament

Workers need to be able to afford to live in Wellington and “instead of penalising people who are paying fair wages against people who are not, it would make it an even playing field”, he said.

Unions need only get signatures from 1000 workers in any particular industry to trigger negotiations for a Fair Pay Agreement that would establish minimum pay and conditions under a law passed by Parliament last month.

And once negotiations are triggered, a deal must be negotiated or else imposed by the Employment Relations Authority.

Council of Trade Unions adviser Emily Rosenthal believed hospitality, supermarket, and early childhood education workers, cleaners, security guards and bus drivers may be among those ready to initiate negotiations as soon as the Fair Pay legislation took effect on December 1.

Toby, a Wellington sous chef, says low pay and staff shortages are both sources stress for workers.

Renwick said Night Flower’s owners and their fellow bar staff were all paid between $24 an $27 an hour, a bit above “the living wage” of $23.65 an hour.

But he was reluctant to say exactly what he would like to see in a Fair Pay Agreement for hospitality workers, precisely because it was supposed to be a negotiation.

“I don't think it's my right to choose that. It should be a discussion between two parties, which I don’t think it currently is,” he said.

Toby, a full-time sous chef in Wellington, who asked not have his surname used so his comments did not reflect on his employer, has worked in about 30 venues in the city over the past few years, as an employee and a temp.

That was often alongside students who were taking “every single shift they can” to try to make ends meet because Wellington was so expensive to live in, he said.

He believed the minimum pay in the industry should be the living wage “at the very least”, but would like to see the floor set at $25 an hour for staff who had been working in the industry for more than a couple of months.

“It's not easy work, especially when every single business is short-staffed,” he said.

“Yes, it's a hard time for businesses, but everywhere I've worked is still turning a profit. Nowhere I have worked has closed since Covid, put it that way.”

Prior to Covid as many as a quarter of hospitality staff working late nights in Courtenay Pl were tourists on working holidays, but they were now in short supply, he said.

Particularly since Covid, he had seen many employers push people into working even if they were not feeling well.

Julie White, chief executive of Hospitality New Zealand, believes moving straight to the living wage could limit opportunities for students and school-leavers.

“It is not good for customers and from a food safety perspective it’s not ideal.”

Aidan Donohue, 18, knows how hard it is to get by in the Capital.

He works at McDonalds for “as many hours as Studylink will allow” to help meet the $560 weekly rent on the accommodation he shares with his partner, while studying commerce at Victoria University.

“I’m on $22.10 an hour which is the ‘crew trainer’ rate.”

Simply raising the minimum wage, currently $21.20 an hour, would be “a plausible option”, but Fair Pay Agreements can be more tailored to needs in each industry, he said.

“It’s not just about the money. We want standardised training so you can work anywhere and employers will know you are safe to be around certain foods.”

Hospitality NZ chief Julie White said it could take on the role of bargaining on behalf of employers.

But she said most of them were opposed to a Fair Pair Agreement and a deal could be complicated to negotiate, in part because of the variety and fluidity of the various work people did in the industry.

“There is going to be a lot of time, energy and money spent on this and what I'm really concerned about is that it's not going to be enduring.”

The forces of supply and demand were already impacting pay in the sector which “certainly won't go backwards”, she said.

But an issue with “going straight to the living wage” was that a job in hospitality was often the first job people had when they were at school or straight after school, she said.

“I would be really concerned that we will actually ‘overlook’ these people, and they may turn into a vulnerable cohort of people without experience.”

White said rises in the minimum wage had driven up pay for entry-level positions in the industry.

“In some areas what has been overlooked is the elastic band has been stretched as far as it can and there's no money left over for ‘the middle’ and people who have experience, and that's quite concerning.”