Shane Te Pou: Fair Pay Agreements Act will cement equality for hospitality industry

In the coming months, representatives of the F&B industry’s workers and employers will hash out an agreement on fair working hours and penalty rates. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

Thirty-something years ago I worked the public bar at the deservedly infamous Gluepot Tavern in Ponsonby. Day in and day out, I pulled pints and poured nips of cheap sherry for a rogues’ gallery of locals and scruffy drifters to a soundtrack stuffed with pub rock classics. It was hard work, but it was real work, and in that dingy room I learned the humility, patience and confidence that I have relied on so heavily in my later life.

It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a lucrative endeavour. I saw it as an education of sorts - a rite of passage even - and while I cherished my time at the Gluepot I felt the persistent pull of a “real job” in the “real world”.

In the intervening decades, I have been fortunate enough to travel extensively and have found that for much of the rest of the world, bars and restaurants are not where one escapes life. Rather, they are the forum in which life is meted out in double-pours and friendly ears.

Bartenders, waiters, porters and chefs hold court in these spaces, and they are valued. In Paris, a maitre d’ of good repute is held in the same regard as the local doctor. In New York City, a barman worth his salt can achieve the rank of local celebrity. Even over the ditch – a common narrative these days – outcomes for hospitality workers are much greater than in Aotearoa.

Here, the ceiling is low. Rising costs, predatory employment practices and an endemic undervaluation of the F&B sector have positioned hospitality jobs as temporary stopgaps for students, travellers and recent migrants.

Not only are these jobs low-paid, but they are often fraught with abuse, exploitation and wage theft. A recent AUT report on the industry found that 42 per cent of respondents did not receive their full break entitlements, 23 per cent reported experiencing bullying or harassment, and 59 per cent said that they were either planning on resigning or unsure about staying in their role.

Traditionally, the industry has been feeble in combatting this trend and is one of the least unionised across the motu. Another consequence of National’s ill-fated Employment Contracts Act (1991), it appears. Our much-loved dens of iniquity are now dens of inequity.

Hope, though, has appeared in the form of last year’s Fair Pay Agreements Act. Bus drivers were first in the queue for bargaining, with the hospitality sector following shortly after. In the coming months, representatives of the F&B industry’s 150,000 workers and 24,000 employers will meet on either side of the bargaining table to hash out an agreement cementing fair working hours and penalty rates.

Neil Finn, himself no stranger to the Gluepot, would have us believe that history never repeats – in this case, I hope it does. We have a proud and hard-fought history of collective bargaining, strike action and unionisation. By all accounts, employment outcomes for our kaimahi have decreased as quickly as union membership has.

We have an unfortunate tendency in our nation to reserve the most exhausting conditions for the most marginalised in our society. The idea of a student working part time at a bar to pay their rent is a lot less charming when you consider that they are likely paying north of $200 a week for a cold, damp flat and being overworked and underpaid for the privilege.

Why make life harder for those with the most to gain? Is it really surprising when those people leave our country for better opportunities abroad?

I will be watching the bargaining process with interest, and I’m not alone. Kerry Davies, the national secretary of the Public Service Association, Aotearoa’s largest trade union, had this to say: “We support and celebrate an FPA for hospitality workers. Hospitality workers deserve decent consistent conditions just like other workers. In a sector with a huge range of small and large workplaces scattered across the country, an FPA provides … protection and consistency, not just around pay.”

Hardly a controversial idea, I think, and an echo of Martin Luther King Jr’s statement that “all labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance”.

Wise words, indeed. Is there anything more uplifting than a strong flat white, served with a smile and a story, or a good meal cooked with care at your local? I think not.

Shane Te Pou (Ngāi Tūhoe) is a commentator, blogger and former Labour Party activist.