Sacked workers to occupy inner city hotel

On 4 March a restaurant at a 5-star inner city hotel changed hands. The new contract was won by the same manager of the company that previously held the contract.

Five restaurant staff are members of Unite Union. They were all sacked while the non-union staff kept on. The manager then hired staff to replace those he dumped. Staff say money deducted from their pay has gone missing, including union fees, student loan repayments, child support payments and taxes.

Sacked staff and supporters will occupy the hotel restaurant to get answers to their questions:

• Why were these hard working staff sacked?
• Why were union members singled out?
• What happened to the union fees that were deducted from the workers’ wages and never paid to the union?
• What happened to the money deducted from wages for student loan repayments? It has not been received by Inland Revenue.
• Why were the workers not given pay slips?
• Where did the money go that was deducted for child support? Inland Revenue hasn’t received it.
• What happened to the tax deductions that came out of the workers’ wages and have not been received by Inland Revenue?
• Why did hotel contract out to this manager when they knew he hadn’t provided pay slips and wasn’t forwarding union fees that he had deducted? They knew that wages hadn’t been paid on time and that it was a struggle to even get the manager to do automatic payment of wages.
• Why did the hotel management refuse to tell the workers who the new contractor was going to be?

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