Decaffeinated resistance: Social constructions of wage theft in Melbourne’s hospitality industry
| Author | Emma Ferris,Stuart Ross |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/26338076221115891 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Decaffeinated resistance:
Social constructions of wage
theft in Melbourne’s hospitality
industry
Emma Ferris and Stuart Ross
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne,
Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
Wage theft, or the illegal non-payment of employee entitlements, is a pernicious and highly
prevalent practice in industries across Australia, but particularly in hospitality. Despite recent
media attention to cases involving some high-profile employers, little is known about how
wage theft is experienced or understood by employees or the public . This research examines
how wage theft is constructed and negotiated by employees and community members.
Participants’constructions of wage theft reflected the consumerist, managerialist and individu-
alist logics that have emerged in the wake of the intensive neoliberal restructuring of our
economies and workplaces over the past three decades. It is argued that these views are
also reflected in the current criminal enforcement regime that frames underpayment as a
problem of rogue actors, rather than a social and structural issue. To disrupt the societal
and disciplinary acceptance of wage theft, further criminological studies should aim to map
out the direct and indirect harms arising from wage theft
Keywords
Wage theft, underpayment, entitlements, neoliberalism, criminalisation
Date received: 24 January 2022; accepted: 11 July 2022
Introduction
Wage theft, or the illegal withholding of employee wages and entitlements
1
, is a pernicious
and entrenched practice in many industries across Australia, but especially in hospitality.
Recent investigations by the Fair Work Ombudsman (2020, p. 1) found that 50% of
Corresponding author:
Stuart Ross, The University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus, Parkville, AU-VIC Victoria 3444, Australia.
Email: rosssr1@unimelb.edu.au
Article
Journal of Criminology
2023, Vol. 56(1) 42–58
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/26338076221115891
journals.sagepub.com/home/anj
businesses in the national food and retail sectors failed to pay staff correctly. Nationwide, it is
estimated that one in two hospitality workers are underpaid (Senate Education and
Employment References Committee, 2017, p. 59). A damning investigation by the union
Hospo Voice (2017, p. 1) found that 76% of 624 surveyed workers had been underpaid.
Wage theft particularly affects vulnerable workers in Australia, with young people, migrants
and women most likely to be victims of underpayment (Cavanough & Blain, 2019; Clibborn
& Wright, 2018).
Until recently, wage theft has been treated as a regulatory issue falling under the jur-
isdiction of the Fair Work Ombudsman, which enforces workplace laws through non-
punitive mechanisms. In the wake of recent scandals (see for example Clayton, 2020;
Ferguson, 2021 and Ryan & Chau, 2019) jurisdictions across Australia have begun to
treat underpayment as a criminal issue. Under Victoria’sWage Theft Act 2020 (Vic)
and Queensland’sCriminal Code and Other Legislation (Wage Theft) Amendment Act
2020 (Qld), employers caught dishonestly underpaying workers can now face up to
10 years’jail, and in Victoria, fines of up to $218,088 for individuals, and
$1,090,440 for companies. The federal government also included criminal sanctions
for deliberate, systematic underpayment in the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting
Australia’s Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021 (Cth)—although the bill eventually
passed without the proposed changes. It seems likely that there will be further attempts
across Australia to criminalize underpayment.
Despite this flurry of legislative activity, there remain few studies of wage theft, particu-
larly in criminology. Most recent studies are written from a labor relations or political
economy perspective and are concerned with the exploitation of migrant workers and stu-
dents (see Campbell et al., 2019; Clibborn & Wright, 2018; Gao, 2018; Rorris, 2018).
Robinson and Brenner’s (2021) recent study of underpayment in commercial kitchens
focuses largely on employee complicity with underpayment and does not substantively
engage with criminological questions concerning the causes of wage theft or its impact on
those subjected to it. Criminological literature has largely ignored the more pedestrian, yet
more prevalent, underpayment of vast swathes of the workforce (Leighton, 2018; Lynch,
2011), suggesting a disciplinary failure to recognize wage theft as a form of crime warranting
research attention.
A primary aim of this research is therefore to examine wage theft as a pervasive form of
worker exploitation and establish a foundation for future research into underpayment. This
study is exploratory in nature, aiming to sketch out the contours of the problem so that
further areas of research can be identified. Specifically, we aim to expose the social values
and dynamics informing underpayment by investigating how employees and the community
construct the practice. Hibou suggests that dominant social values “transform the nature of
what is being pursued and what is not”by “redefin[ing] the boundaries between the permis-
sible, the tolerable and the reprehensible”(2012, p. 647). Accordingly, we argue that if we
wish to understand why underpayment has become so prevalent and apparently tolerated,
we must observe how people think about the practice and the values informing these
views. Understanding social perceptions of underpayment may also help us to understand
the potential effects and implications of attempts to address underpayment through criminal
sanctions. We hope that this work will help establish wage theft as a subject of criminological
inquiry and spark debate over the role of the criminal justice sphere in addressing
underpayment.
Ferris and Ross 43
To continue reading
Request your trial