r/australia • u/Rubiginous • 8h ago
politics Hospitality industry warns of critical workers shortages as migration cuts loom
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-14/hospitality-industry-warns-shortages-migrant-workers/107266454245
u/Max_J88 8h ago
The hospitality industry will need to pay its local staff better…
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u/Direct_Substance8317 6h ago
"Hospitality industry warns of critical remuneration adjustments should migrants be cut." Fixed it.
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u/custard-arms 1h ago
Or they can even take a chance and train some workers like students, those between jobs, mature people looking for a few hours.
Like how hard is it to wash dishes, carry some plates or ring up a bill. When I was a uni student I could never get a look-in cause everyone wanted a dishwasher with experience.
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u/Whatsapokemon 3h ago
Which will make things more expensive or just force a bunch of them out of business.
It's a tradeoff - you can't get rid of a shit-ton of labour in your economy without prices rising or businesses going under. Labour is one of the main inputs to an economy, and if you just kick a bunch of able-bodied workers out then you're forcing up the cost of production.
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u/what-no-potatoes 19m ago
Honestly, if your business is relying on under valuing workers, it deserves to go.
Business owners need to gain some people skills and understand that they aren't entitled to great employees- they need to earn them.
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u/Haenamatme 7h ago
Worlds tiniest violin plays.
I've never understood the complaining from hospo operators given the fact that I, as a citzen with a decade of experience in the industry, can't even get an interview for these jobs. Hotels, restauranta, cafes - you name it. The reason they cry about this shit is not because locals don't want to do the work. They just don't want to hire locals.
Try and apply for any hospo gig on one of the usual sites and I guarantee you aren't getting a call at all.
Most businesses in the hospitality industry deserve to fail.
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u/Worldly_Cobbler_1087 2h ago
I, as a citzen with a decade of experience in the industry, can't even get an interview for these jobs.
For years, decades even, these whinging cafe owners would take their sob stories to the Telecrap saying that they can't hire any locals because 'Australians are lazy and refuse to do work that's why we have to hire immigrants' when in reality they hire immigrants because they're less likely to know their workers rights and can be treated like shit with long hours, no breaks and paid less than award wages.
Don't forget all the attempts to get penalty rates cut because 'we can't afford to be open on sundays' instead of just not opening on sundays. Then there was the sneaky play of forcing people working from home back in to the office because of the poor coffee shop owners in the city having nobody to sell which was code for 'landlords need their rental income' I've got zero fucks to give for struggling cafe owners who take advantage of people who don't know their rights
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u/broadsword_1 1h ago
Yeah, all those sob stories seem to leave out the part where they gain a reputation among the locals of being cheap, abusive jerks.
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u/iguessineedanaltnow 11m ago
So I work in marketing for sport and hospitality. What's happening with the hospo side is that all of the areas of the business with overhead have been outsourced. The businesses I work with have catering companies doing the food and hiring the kitchen/wait staff. The business is providing the venue for the catering company and then getting paid a monthly fee + percent of revenue by the catering company running it.
The only people actually being employed by the hospitality company directly are the white collar workers at various levels of the business. The catering companies are bringing in people on work visas that are reliant on them for their ability to remain in the country, and the venue side can completely wash their hands of the whole thing.
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u/Adventurous-Exam355 7h ago
Maybe your resume is not good enough ?
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u/Haenamatme 7h ago
Given it was good enough to get a decade of experience in the first place, and maintain employment in other industries, I don't think my resume is the problem lmfao.
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u/Substantial_Ad_3386 7h ago
probably too good too accept wagetheft
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u/Nostonica 4h ago
Ha this, I've had employers get really cagey when I say I want to go to be paid as per the award.
Like super positive to get me in the door as long as it's cash in hand and no super.
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u/Different-Bag-8217 8h ago
This is the same bullshit arguments that the Canadian hospitality industry used. Don’t fall for it. All this does is put a manipulation in play that takes advantage of foreign workers while skyrocketing youth unemployment. Then when it takes a foothold in the country those who once where part of the system become the abusers only employing their own. They hire their own kind knowing they can hold over their heads that they are one step away from being deported if they don’t comply. This also makes it easy for the international gang members to take a foothold hold here. To an extent it’s already happening having personally worked with a few who were Latin kings. One only has to look there to see how this has turned into a massive mess in Canada don’t let it happen here.
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u/Assasinius 6h ago
LKs ? In Aus? Which city were they from if I may ask?
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u/Worldly_Cobbler_1087 2h ago
I don't think it's Latin Kings (I thought that was just a prison gang) but cartels have infiltrated Sydney for a start, it's where all the cocaine is coming from and why certain street gangs are getting bolder and more organised.
NZ and the Pacific Islands aren't prepared for the trouble coming their way with all the deportations of gang members that have cartel connections.
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u/DreDayEveryday 8h ago
Maybe the people the AHA didn’t hire to make their AI-generated ad can replace the migrants that go back home.
If businesses have to increase their prices because there’s less migrants to fill those roles, that means the wages of those roles are being artificially suppressed by government policy.
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u/rollingstone1 8h ago
Don’t fall for this. You only need to look at the UK to see how dodgy the hospitality visa situation gets.
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u/KoalaCapp 7h ago
I always find this argument empty.
Hospo work isn't particularly "skilled" that local Aussies can't fill the roles. (I've done hospo in UK/London venues for 10 years) its only migrants on student/whv that fill the role due to lack of knowledge on what is and isn't acceptable for wages and rights in the workplace.
There are plenty of local early 20s in regional and tourist towns looking for work but cafe/bar owners won't put them in because then they will have to pay and treat them well.
Hospo will dip a little but it'll do fine
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u/Gazza_s_89 8h ago edited 8h ago
My unpopular opinion is that the hospitality sector is too large anyway.
Our towns and cities are full of struggling coffee shops selling low value add items, owned by unimaginative entrepreneurs.
Now owners are complaining that nobody wants to pay $12 for toasties and nobody wants to commute 1h to a minimum wage job.
Or IDK maybe the sector could be larger.... but it'd very susceptible to consumer spending being crowded out by the cost of housing.
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u/W0nderWhite 8h ago
Hey those owners work really hard making TikToks and AI menus!
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u/enigmasaurus- 5h ago
Oh man those AI menus alone have got to be putting countless customers off. They all look nauseating to me.
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u/Gazza_s_89 6h ago
The text on the AI menus is always in an arch shape, like they are advertising a circus.
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u/visualdescript 6h ago
They're struggling because the ever growing wealth divide is pricing the middle and lower class out of actually spending money on eating out.
Historically there have always been a lot of hospitality places, and by historically I mean, throughout all of history. Shit even small towns used to have 3 pubs open and doing well.
Everything other than focusing on how we can stop and reduce the wealth divide is a distraction. The wealth of the mega rich needs to be redistributed among the masses.
Sadly AI, like most tech, is just accelerating the divide.
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u/Gazza_s_89 6h ago
But it's not just 3 pubs, it's 3 pubs, the RSL, the bowlo, servos selling food, a branch of every fast food chain, plus stuff that wasn't around when it was a 3 pub town (Thai, Chinese takeaway, some place selling acai,.....endless coffee shops )
The sector became artificially large because wage suppression made it easy to grow.
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u/thudface 5h ago
You’re not wrong, my home town on the NSW south coast is a prime example of this. 50,000ish people, 3 maccas, a Burger King, 2 kfc’s, Taco Bell, 4-5 struggling pubs, 4 rsl’s, 3 bowlo’s and all the cafes you can shake a stick at. And that’s the main town, the surrounding smaller country and beach towns have the same problem, restaurants literally pop up for the holiday season and go bankrupt 3months after peak holiday.
I used to be a chef in some decent places and writing was on the wall back then. The sector is overwhelmingly saturated with garbage and other over priced garbage.1
u/broadsword_1 1h ago
restaurants literally pop up for the holiday season and go bankrupt 3months after peak holiday.
It's amazing that places still fall into that trap.
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u/DisappointedQuokka 4h ago edited 4h ago
I honestly don't think it's just wage suppression via immigration.
Something to think about is that pretty much all our towns and cities have transitioned, for the most part, a service economy. At least outside of big mining or agricultural hubs.
For a lot of people, what other work is available?
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u/wallitron 5h ago
I arrive at this thread thinking, yeah, people perhaps paying attention to the actual economic implications of reducing immigration, and we have the top comment essentially saying "the industry that drives people spending money on the fun things in life was too big anyway".
Sure, get frustrated at the quality of the products and services of an industry, that's one thing. But do we realise what wanting this industry to shrink actually means? Celebrating less fun stuff, that's what we want now?
What next? Healthcare, wow, so expensive and quality has gone to shit. Probably too large as well, amiright!?
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u/broadsword_1 1h ago
But do we realise what wanting this industry to shrink actually means? Celebrating less fun stuff, that's what we want now?
There's only a limited pool of customers and if it's diluted too much then it becomes a game of just outlasting everyone, but they normally go through a period of cost-cutting everything (cheaper ingredients, skeleton staff) which can chase customers away all over again.
The only hope is when the market stabilizes into just the few survivors they can go back to a balance of staffing/quality/price that grows the market, but we keep getting stuck in a constant austerity/profit-maxing loop.
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u/m00nh34d 7h ago
That's the thing with supply and demand though, it's as large as the demand allows it to be. They're clearly pushing things to the edge of where the demand is at, with how much they complain about, well, everything but a dramatic reduction won't happen without some other external influence (say, a massive drop in migration numbers...).
If a dramatic reduction did happen, it would have a flow on effect to other parts of the economy as well. Suppliers would also have reduced demand, the areas of the economy that need hospitality to function would have issues (tourism).
Maybe there's a little room there for a reduction, but that's well controlled by supply and demand right now. A big external push will cause major issues though.
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u/Relevant_Lettuce7337 7h ago
I also honestly wonder if there’s some money laundering going on in the hospitality sector. I’m thinking of one restaurant in my area that I’ve been walking past for years, and I’ve hardly ever seen any customers there, apart from the workers having their lunch or dinner breaks. How do such places stay open?
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u/Aggravating-Ratio-24 6h ago
That is definitely a thing. There's a restaurant in Hobart like that, been around for years but never actually closes (and very rarely opens too for that matter). There's a lot of suggestions about a skly casino
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u/supremo_remo 6h ago
Also often buying such businesses as a strategy for Visa's and pathway to permanent residency.
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u/darren457 22m ago edited 10m ago
owned by unimaginative entrepreneurs
This really is the case. A friend who works in commercial realestate mentioned a good chunk of them have rich parents or are already loaded/have paid off mortgages and do this to pass the time. The rest are just stubborn and don't want to change things even though they're barely breaking even. They need to shut down so younger entrepreneurs who are actually able to think out of the box replace them. The worst are the ones sitting on high foot traffic prime cbd realestate with constantly deserted stores selling overpriced unimiginative food or overpriced drop-shipped garbage.
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u/Knee_Jerk_Sydney 5h ago
I guess those cafe owners and their employees will have to close up shop and either go on the dole or compete for jobs in some other industry, maybe even yours.
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u/zedder1994 5h ago
Hospitality is more than coffee shops lol. One area that hotels always struggle with is getting staff to clean and make-up rooms. It seems no one likes changing the sheets on beds.
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u/Nostonica 4h ago
It seems no one likes changing the sheets on beds.
Strict time limits and high standards, average pay. Why would you?
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u/Zestyclose_Strike157 8h ago
Maybe we will end up with higher paying and better quality tourists. How’s that for a conversation starter.
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u/InstantShiningWizard 6h ago
Alternate headline: "Struggling Café Owners continue to do everything but pay legal wages and superannuation to attract Australian workers".
Possibly with another interview with the grubs that own Mary's Burgers, or Grill'd. Hell, bring Dave Hughes in, I'm sure he has something to say on the subject as well
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u/Nostonica 8h ago
Hospo sucks, so many dodgy operators who don't even bother attempting to provide the minimum standard in the industry award.
Not to mention there's a awful lot of student visa holders who with care can work full time hours but only pay tax on the booked hours.
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u/Apprehensive-Sell623 8h ago
Only a couple of days ago I heard unemployment is going to go up because of AI so losing excess cafes and some other poor food shops should not be noticed
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u/ChandeliererLitAF 7h ago
Pyramid builders warn of industry collapse as anti-slavery laws / productivity improvements approach.
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u/emilyjuly 8h ago edited 8h ago
Hospitality jobs are soo fucking evil. I’ve been paid cash with no weekend rates or night rates working until 4am being forced to clean the mens urinal every day as a bartender for $25 an hour. I’ve worked in cafes where your only break is 10-15 mins for your 8 hour shift and they still scolded me for not working for 2 minutes to sit and scroll on my phone when there was no one there. They just want to exploit their workers. You don’t get the tips from the square machines, the owner does. no one wants to cooking jobs? You always have to do so much with so little time, and chefs can be so egotistical and disrespectful to anyone below their chef level(not all of them). fuck hospitality employers, they engage in the worst practices and complain that no one wants to work for them and hate it when people call in sick and would rather sick people handle food than deal with someone being out.
Also the fucking absurd surcharges, you get 100% more customers on a weekend so you decide to charge every customer 20% more… wtf?
All of them using the SAME fucking ugly ai posters proving all they care abt is the bottom line makes me disgusted
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u/emilyjuly 8h ago edited 7h ago
Also those fucking redbull vodkas at festivals are sometimes made with 15mls of vodka … charging $23
Working at festivals they literally ask you to come an hour early unpaid just to stand there bc they need to “get everyone signed on”13
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u/Slight_Low_3375 8h ago
Cafe's, bars and restaurants mostly suck now anyway. Insane prices for lesser quality and reduced portions. I have basically given up on them and love cooking now. Glad I was able to enjoy 30 years of dining out before COVID broke everything. It's sad though.
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u/perrino96 6h ago edited 4h ago
Every time I've had a mate complain of not being paid properly or treated like shit 9/10 it's usually the hospitality industry. If your business relies that much on foreign labour you can continuously churn through... You don't deserve to be in business.
All of them eventually gain a forklift license and do warehousing or big retail where you'll get paid properly.
Edit: I would also like to add in a lot of places, especially regional areas its very much a conflict of interest, where hospitality and accomodation work in hand in hand to garnish as much through sub par accommodation in overpriced rooms and then provide the absolute minimum of pay to people who've invested themselves through layers of visas and come all this way.
It's rotten behaviour and it's quite embarrassing as a country that we have let it go on for so long.
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u/l3ntil 5h ago
"We have 7,000 chef and cook vacancies today. "
Yes, but how many of those 7000 chef and cook vacancies pay a livable wage with legal working conditions?
Hey hospo! The "we need migrants to screw them over in ways we can't with locals" is not the great campaign you want it to be.
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u/iguessineedanaltnow 7m ago
It's pretty effective for an audience that already thinks eating out is too expensive, however. People aren't going to want to pay $40 for a burger.
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u/bathdweller 8h ago
So I guess they were taking our jobs.
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u/Whatsapokemon 3h ago
"Our" jobs?? They're jobs Australians typically don't want to work because they're shitty. The reason migrants work them is typically because Australians have access to education and opportunities that pay far more.
I hate this cringe larp "Oh, I'd definitely work picking fruit or as a dish washer if only those nasty migrants didn't get there first!". No you fucking wouldn't.
Forcing out migrant workers won't magically transform them into highly desirable positions, they'll still be shitty, but it'll just be harder to find people to do them, meaning costs will spike.
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u/bathdweller 2h ago
Careful friend, some privilege just seeped out of your arse 🧻
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u/Whatsapokemon 0m ago
Facts over your feelings mate. The average Australian has access to infinitely better opportunities.
I'm just sick of your kind who wants to demote Aussies to working backbreaking menial labour jobs all because of internet memes telling you how great those jobs are. We're an advanced modern society. We should be training our population to work actual good modern jobs.
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u/icecoldbobsicle 7h ago
My take on this headline is they just don't want to pay more for Aussies and want to use the excuse no Aussies wanna work. I'm sure we've all worked for a business under tough times, good ones have good owners and get ahead of tough times.. this is greedy lazy speak in the story title.
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u/Substantial_Ad_3386 7h ago
But there's an easy fix, if they start paying award rates properly there are people already that will work for them. Then all they need to do is put their prices up 20% to cover the cost and blame the card surcharge ban and everyone is happy
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u/Meng_Fei 6h ago
These are the same garbage arguments Trumpers use in the US when they claim that higher minimum wages will ruin the hospitality industry. They just want cheap workers with no rights. The least they could do is be up front about it.
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u/bored-and-here 5h ago
"Europe’s large population kept labor cheap, but this reality was inverted almost overnight after the emergence of the plague. This was because the malady led to an era of labor scarcity that made workers more valuable. While the situation granted them leverage, it also led to social friction. In the immediate aftermath, the English chronicler Henry Knighton noted the change.
He observed that laborers now became insolent, and defied their lords’ commands. Historical data confirms that in the 1350s, the wage spike averaged 12 to 28 percent and showed further increases in the cities. Some manors experienced an over 60 percent increase in wages. By the 1360s, wages had risen by another 20 to 40 percent across England."
This sounds absolutely awful. We really need to fix this with mass migration. M'lord's manor will not survive!
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u/egowritingcheques 6h ago
Famously low paying industry afraid they won't be able to hire people.
Hmm... I guess there's nothing that can be done.
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u/slowcheetah91 5h ago
Hilarious. I have had migrant friends and Australian born friends work hospitality and these wankers grind the migrants into the ground. They pay them ‘properly’ but often force them to work overtime with no extra rates, subtly threaten them to work more and if you don’t ‘they’ll get in trouble’ with immigration/visa services. Basic predatory shit
Like others have said here, they’ll just have to operate as any other business and pay people fair work and fair hours.
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u/grumpyoldmanBrad 3h ago
If your business model is to pay your staff below award wages and entitlements then you probably don't deserve to be in business
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u/T_J_Rain 6h ago
Yeah - a lack of an endless pool willing, able, transient workers with zero knowledge of labour laws, wages and conditions, who are readily exploitable by unscrupulous bosses.
There's a solid reason that most Australian citizens don't work in the hospitality industry, or if they do, it's certainly not for a career.
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u/enigmasaurus- 6h ago
I think immigration has a huge number of social and cultural benefits and I do love living in such a diverse country... but I always find it a bit frustrating in these debates that industries seem to conveniently forget migrants also need services and generate demand.
If we grow the population more quickly, the hospitality industry does not "meet its worker needs" because those needs are not static and just expand to accommodate more people, meaning we never fill those shortages. Is there a single skills shortage we've ever addressed with immigration? Ever even improved? No, because more workers means more demand for more services, then we need even more workers and on it goes. It's not a magical solution.
We need to get out of this endless growth mindset so we can stop deluding ourselves into thinking it can fix our workforce shortages simply by adding more people. Were should instead be investing more in training the people we have. Also, the hospitality industry pays absolute peanuts, have they considered that's the real problem?
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u/Adept_Mushroom_8676 7h ago
Indians aren't coming here or work in bars. When did you last see an Indian bartender?
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u/Puzzleheaded-Eye9081 8h ago
I’d be less worried about hospo and a lot more worried about nursing, aged care, and disability services.
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u/Bitopp009 3h ago
With all the AI related job cuts and off shoring, some of the white collar office workers will be needing jobs soon. And they won't be exploitable by the hospitality industry.
They will have staff they just will have to pay full wage and super.
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u/mediweevil 2h ago
read: hospitality industry afraid they might not be able to exploit cheap foreign labour that will work for less than award rates.
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u/Jackaddler 1h ago
(Fortunately) fewer people can afford to go out now so the industry will be shrink accordingly
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u/No-Sweet-7012 46m ago
I work a job where I see a lot of people's payslips and work conditions and I tell you what the hospo industry is a big one for doing the bob from the incredibles working his bank job bit of "Oh no it appears I cannot legally advice you on your work but on a COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE did you know Fairwork is a free government resource that has a pay rate calculator, guides to work hours and breaks as well as a free ombudsman who can investigate if your employer doesn't follow these conditions and action changes. It would be such a coincidence if you contacted 13 13 94 and told them everything you just told me."
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u/JustMeClinton 26m ago
Pay locals better and those white collar workers in between jobs could pick up shifts, no?
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u/darren457 14m ago
I mean...if you know anyone working in the hospo industry you'll know that, apart from a few rare exceptions, it's mostly just operating on legalised slave conditions with extra steps. Even the big fastfood chains are guilty of it too if you look at how may times they've been sued, which is why they have a preference for desperate people on visas who won't kick up a fuss. Despite all this it's not like their prices are affordable either so i'm not sure what the point of them existing is. Many of them need to shut down so commercial rents drop and younger more intuitive entrepreneurs can afford to take their place and figure out how to make profits without requiring a permanent underclass.
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u/Llamadrugs 11m ago
Unemployment is like 4.5%, surely we have more than enough people to fill these spots.
Why does it have to be migrates?
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u/gccmelb 7m ago edited 1m ago
What a crock.
During Covid, when the country was letting in limited amounts of people, employers suddenly started offering local workers better conditions and pay.
I still remember seeing on the side of road, signs offering above wages for jobs.
Not since the 60/70's we have probably seen employees in a slight position of power.
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u/m00nh34d 7h ago
Yes, hospo is a shitty industry, they over work and underpay their staff, downright exploit them. Doesn't make the migration cuts work though.
What will happen if we see migration cuts like PHON/Coalition are proposing, is we'll see a contraction in our economy as a whole. People will lose their jobs. BUT there will be other jobs for them to pick up, like say in hospitality.
There's no reason we can't address both sensibly. We can keep migration at a reasonable level to support the economy, we can also push for better conditions and wages for hospo staff.
I cannot see PHON pushing for that. And he supporters will be the ones most likely to end up in the situation mentioned before. So, I guess we'll just be reading more on /r/LeopardsAteMyFace ?
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u/EducationalShake6773 8h ago
If the economy looks rough now it's going to get a lot worse when these immigration cuts bite. Funny thing is the same people who wanted this will ofc get even angrier and more radicalised after they lose their local services and in some cases their jobs.
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u/C0ld_Fr0nt_ 8h ago
I guess we'd better just keep importing mass humanity by the millions every decade, then.
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u/White_Immigrant 7h ago
I'm looking forward to everything getting shitter and more expensive in order to appease thick racists, just like in the UK and USA.
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u/Extension_Guess_1308 8h ago
Being a migrant myself, I'm all for sensible migration across the board.
But the hospitality sector is taking the piss when they're crying out loud about an impending crisis. They're the ones who kept the award suppressed, 24 hour rosters with no extra compensation amd so on.
Its not a mystery why only the most desperate get into the industry. Its not just cafes, but hotels and venues as well that are just fucking up the industry.