An Australian burger chain is facing accusations of leveraging traineeship programs to keep its workers on low wages — a claim the company dismisses, saying they are "a great way to provide skills, knowledge and leadership expertise".
This is very reminiscent of the On The Run traineeship scandal that occurred in South Australia not long ago. Anyone know of other companies still using these traineeship loopholes to commit mass wage theft?
Power to them, I hope people support them however they can!
Ridiculous that this trainee stuff is still going on with Grill'd specifically - they've been in the news media for it since at least 2016 (earliest story I can find).
What this SBS article doesn't mention is that Grill'd has been known to drag their feet on progressing a trainee, to just keep them on the lower rate indefinitely.
Yes, that was my experience at OTR. I worked there for like 7 or 8 months before quitting and they'd only just started the "training" around the time I left and even then it was super slow, like one session a fortnight or something. The HappyWash employee at my place was immediately moved into the store when he completed his traineeship (they had a different one to us) so the company put him on the retail traineeship and lowered his wage back to $16 or whatever it was. Then they hired a teenager to fill the HappyWash role.
Considering that Grill’d claim to help community groups with donations, this is very hypocritical.
They can help and homeless by paying their employees a living wage.
Maybe the RAFFWU needs to apply to be recipients of “Local Matters”
Carnegie was big on that. He would pour millions into public works projects like libraries, schools, and performance halls. At the same time he would send auditors to figure out the average cost of living around his steel mills and intentionally pay employees about 80% of that just to keep them dependent on him.
All corporations are evil. All billionaires are bastards.