Masterchef Australia alum Adam Liaw took aim at former Masterchef judge George Calombaris for underpaying his staff, saying that there is “no excuses” for restaurants that rip off their workers.
WATCH: Adam Liaw says prison should be on the table for wage thieves
When asked about George being fined the paltry sum of $200, 000 for underpaying his workers $7.8 million, the second season winner said “jail time should be on the table” for those who commit “wage theft”.
“People should be paid the legal wage to which they’re entitled,” said Liaw who won the second season of MasterChef Australia in 2010.
“The question came up this week about whether or not [wage theft] should be criminal and to that I would say ‘why not?’ It’s a form of fraud and dishonesty.”
Liaw continued: “Increasing penalties and putting people in prison for doing large-scale systemic wage theft is certainly something that should be on the table.”
“Should some of these chefs be locked up?” guest host Fran Kelly asked.
Liaw then revealed that he has also been underpaid as a young worker in the restaurant industry, earning as little as $5 an hour for some shifts.
“In my case that was $10 an hour and $5 an hour in some cases. But none of that is an excuse for not paying your employees properly.
“I have worked in an awful lot of restaurants. I have flipped burgers, washed dishes and cleaned toilets and in the vast majority of those jobs I was not paid an award wage.
“Generally the larger the organisation, the organisations that could afford to have payroll people to keep an eye on whether everyone was being paid accordingly, were the ones that paid better.”
George has since broken his silence on the wage theft scandal, telling The Herald Sun: “There are two important things for Australians to know. The first is that when we discovered there were incorrect payments to members of the team, we self-reported to the Fair Work Ombudsman and co-operated with their investigation.
“The second is that our team members, past and present, have been back-paid in full, and the vast majority repaid before October 2017 in consultation with Fair Work.
“There is no excuse for this and we have the systems in place now.”
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