Is it possible to lose track of AU$7.8 million in wages?
In his first TV appearance since the news emerged that he had underpaid 515 employees across his restaurant group, Australian chef and TV celebrity George Calombaris described the moment he and his business partners realised what had happened.
The chef, whose company, MAdE, currently employs 642 people, told ABC's 7:30 host Leigh Sales that the incident was a terrible mistake, which he and his team owned up to as soon as they became aware of it.
An innocent mistake?
"The thing that I need to say is, in 2017, we found the problem, we self-reported," he said. "We went to Fair Work, we owned up, and two years ago we paid back everyone."
Despite trying to protect his intentions, the chef said his employees were "everything" to him.
“I’m not here to blame anyone. I take full responsibility for this. I’m sorry.”
He explained that it happened as a result of a rapidly expanding restaurant empire, with little to no financial oversight.
"The thing about 13 years ago, you're a young chef, 26 years of age, you want to open your first restaurant, you get together with three other partners at that point, and you open the first one, then the second one opens, the third one, the creativity is flying, the ideas are flying, the dreaming is there."
"You're running a million miles an hour being creative, being someone that can inspire the team with food that you're cooking and you assume that in the back end things are happening at the same speed, but they weren't."
"But the sophistication in the back end wasn't there."
"There was no CEO, there was no people culture manager, there was no elite finance team like we've got now, that can make sure that mistake that we made will never happen again."
"Don't punish my people"
The chef has said that despite having been ordered to pay a AU$200,000 (£113,340) "contrition payment" by the The Fair Work Ombudsman, he has no intention of closing any of his restaurants - despite a public boycott which saw his restaurants deserted in the days following the revelations - and begged for customers to return.
"Don't punish my people," he said.
He claims to want to become a voice for change in the industry.
"It's my job as their leader to keep pushing forward and keep speaking this message, not shying away from the mistake we made, but also acknowledging that we fixed it," he said.
According to The Age, staff at the chef's Made restaurant initially reported underpayments as early as 2015, but at the time it was alleged that the issue had been addressed.
The following year, a new business partner identified a string of discrepancies in the group's accounts. In 2017, the group made a public statement about the incident - unveiling that close to 200 staff had been underpaid by AU$2.6m (£1.47m) - after self-reporting it to The Fair Work Ombudsman.
Who's next?
While many have been quick to chastise the chef. it is worth noting that his might not be an isolated case, as wage underpayments are rife in the restaurant industry.
Just in Australia, The Ombudsman is reportedly looking into allegations of such incidences at restaurants owned by Neil Perry, Guillaume Brahimi, Teage Ezard and Heston Blumenthal.
