How many times you’ve noticed that the entire crew at a particular restaurant, are immigrants with the same background as the restaurant’s cuisine country of origin. Do you think that this is because the owner wants you to have authentic experience or is it because, the owner is more comfortable to cut corners when all the crew are immigrants, and who come from his own background too?I think that you know the answer to this question, right? Well, it makes sense if the crew of the back of the house, had the same heritage as the cuisine’s, but how about the front of the house crew? Why does every one of them need to be an immigrant and one who comes from the same country as the cuisine? If anything, the opposite here should be true – to me, it would make a lot more sense if the front of the house crew were Australian with good English so they can communicate with the multi-background customers. You know, even without researching it, I’m pretty sure that about 90% of the customers of a particular restaurant in Australia, wouldn’t speak the same language as the restaurant’s heritage’s language.
If you’re still not convinced, then how about Seven Eleven in Sydney CBD for example where all the staff are immigrants who come from the same country as the owner of that particular franchise. Well, surely, in this case, this has nothing to do with the “authentic experience” right? I mean Seven Eleven is a multi-billion American public company and don’t exactly cook or serve any exotic food. And we all know what happened at Seven Eleven in terms of underpaying employees, right? Is this a clear-enough example for you in terms of cutting corners in the area of payment compliance.
OK, so let me share with you why I think they’re doing it and why it’s not a great thing for our country! Well as many of you either already know or at least suspect, they’re doing it because they think that running their restaurant within a bubble, allows them to get away with underpayment and OHS violation. Why do they think so? Here’s what I think:
It’s a terrible thing to know that somehow we could be contributing to those negative pressures on some immigrants who come to our shores seeking work to help them accomplish their dreams.
I mean the entire restaurant industry, not only the “exotic-cuisine” restaurant category, is a tough place for workers and remuneration across the entire industry is not exactly great. But I definitely think that the bubbles those particular restaurants put up around their businesses, create the perfect environment for the worst cases of worker payment compliance and OHS abuse, to be rife.
Why is this bad for our county? It’s bad for our country because those immigrants that get sucked into those bubbles, they normally stay in those bubbles for a long time and the problem is they remain in this vicious cycle where they don’t get the chance to work in the rest of our country’s workforce. This is really bad for our country, economy and of course for them because we miss out on having some of these talented workers, developing into leaders who can contribute a lot more to our economy, our social life, our justice system and our democracy.
This is my perspective as an immigrant, Australian and Entrepreneur and so I would love to hear the perspective of HR professionals about this topic – please comment below and let me know what you think – also please share this article on social media if you like it 🙂