Celebrity chef Neil Perry’s Rockpool eateries accused of wage theft

Neil Perry’s Rockpool Dining Group is accused of tampering with time-sheet records so staff who worked up to 100 hours a week looked like they only worked 38.

The ‘audacious’ scheme was allegedly designed to cheat them of overtime pay.

The Hospo Voice Union has hired Maurice Blackburn Lawyers to lodge a complaint against Rockpool with the Fair Work Ombudsman, with the matter to go to mediation on Friday.

The group is accused of tampering with time-sheet software to limit employees to 38 hours pay a week, despite the use of fingerprint scanners for staff clocking on and off and having some work up to 100 hours a week.

Maurice Blackburn estimates the stolen wages total at least $10million in what the law firm calls ‘one of the most egregious cases of wage theft Australia has seen yet’.

The estimated scale of the theft is even bigger than the $7.8million George Calombaris MAdE Establishment group repaid to its workers.

‘Following the Calombaris debacle, the ombudsman must now prosecute Rockpool and go for the maximum fines available to salvage its reputation as a regulator,’ Maurice Blackburn principal lawyer Josh Bornstein said on Thursday.

Former Rockpool chef Rohit Karki said he was ‘treated like an animal’ as he did back-to-back 20-hour shifts on $12 an hour.

‘They tampered with our timesheets, so staff had no record of all the hours we worked,’ he said.

A Rockpool Dining Group spokesman told The Age it had no knowledge of the Maurice Blackburn submission to the Ombudsman and declined to comment on its details. 

The group, partly owned by celebrity chef Neil Perry, has 80 restaurants across the nation and 2,500 staff and revenues of $400m a year.

There is no suggestion Mr Perry was aware of any wrongdoing. 

The group, partly owned by celebrity chef Neil Perry, has 80 restaurants across the nation including Rosetta (pictured) in The Rocks, Sydney