Unfairness: Chinese students face underpaid wages in the Chinese restaurants

Reporter：Yuqing Tan & Luna Ding

Chinese international students working as casual in Melbourne say they are being underpaid by Chinese catering, but some do not know how to assert their rights to their employers.

“My hourly wage is $15” Stella Cheng who is a Chinese international master student said. Currently, she is doing a casual job as a waitress in a Chinese fast food restaurant in Melbourne downtown.

The initial wage of Stella was $12 per hour. “My wage was raised one dollar around every three months during the past year” she said. She works 12 hours per week in that restaurant since 2018, except holidays and the end of semester.

In addition, Stella said, “I have known that the legal minimum wage is about $20 per hour.” She knew that her wage was underpaid, but she did not know how much lower.

According to the Pay Guide - Fast Food Industry Award 2010 released by Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), for the casual, the most basic minimum hourly pay rate for adults (over 20 years) is $26.76.

The most basic minimum hourly pay rate published by FWO, exclude raises of specific situation, such as working in public holiday or high-level job classification.

Data source:FWO

Currently, taking casual jobs is common among Chinese oversea students. Some of them prefer to work in Chinese catering. However, certain Chinese catering pays low casual wages.

“The wages (of Chinese catering) are always between $10 to $12 per hour” Stella said.

Chinese students working in Chinese catering shops in Box Hill

Photo source: Luna Ding

Yeeyi is one of the most visited Chinese comprehensive websites in the Australian Chinese community. On 9th October, in its recruitment section, nearly one-third of recruitment information marking salaries directly and requiring a student visa shown that the wages of employees of catering are less than $15.

For this fact, Stella said that she did not care about the money and work was just a way for her to kill the time. But she felt unfair because she did not receive the legal hourly wage in Australia. However, she did not have any plans to change it. “Actually, compared with China, the salary is not low” she finally said.

It is not just Stella who has this kind of feeling for the hourly wages.

“I knew that it was unfair, but I did not care about that" Joe Wang, a 19 years old Chinese milk tea shop casual waiter, said. His hourly wage is only $12 (after-tax). " Working in the city, it is a normal price, some Chinese restaurants like Number One offer the lower wage” this junior said. He also said that although the wages were low, the milk tea shop was never short of waiters.

For this underpaid situation, some students also have thought of doing something to protect their rights, but they do not know how to do it.

William Han, a 17 years old Chinese secondary school student only was paid $8 per hour in his previous casual work by a Chinese restaurant employer. He had thought to report his former employer, but he did not have sufficient evidence. “He was all paid in cash, with no record of transfers, the report was useless.” he said. On the other hand, he worried that his action is also illegal. He said, “I was 14 years old at that time, and this was child labor!”

The website of FWO released a statement that employers and employees cannot be paid less than their applicable minimum wage. However, like the cases above, the phenomenon of low wages still happened.

To explain the reasons, Isabelle Butler, a lawyer at the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) Legal Service, said, “It is likely that a combination of factors has led to the proliferation of hospitality employees being underpaid, including issues with reporting employers and enforcement of penalties for employers who break the law.”

For instance, she said, some hospitality workers who are from overseas were unaware of their rights under Australian law and some workers did not want to report their employers because they were afraid that their reports will lead them to lose the job.

Under this situation, Isabelle said, “Before applying for a job, students should do some research online to understand how employment laws cover them in Australia”. And she provided some helpful websites for the student who plans to find a casual job, which are Fair Work Ombudsman and Study Melbourne.

Additionally, as the lawyer said, if international students believe that they are in an underpaid situation, they should check their correct pay rate on the Fair Work Ombudsman’s website. If they are being underpaid, they should obtain free legal help from organizations like UMSU Legal Service, Study Melbourne, Young Workers’ Centre, and Job Watch. “Both international and domestic students are covered by minimum wage laws” she also said.

In the past years, FWO carried out rectification of this underpaid situation.

In 2018, Melissa Davey wrote in The Guardian that the Fair Work Ombudsman would audit the fast food, restaurant and cafe sectors and would penalize businesses exploiting vulnerable workers, including students, casual staff and immigrants.

According to a media release of the FWO website in 2019, Phat Elephant, a restaurant paying illegally low wages, was punished after three employees who are international students requested assistance to FWO. “Under the Court Enforceable Undertaking, Phat Elephant has agreed to make a $10,000 donation to the Multicultural Community Centre” the media release stated.