Nearly 100 current and former Grill’d workers have contacted the Young Workers Centre since the launch of the petition a fortnight ago, with many backing up Kashmir’s experiences in being held back from completing her traineeship at Grill’d.

The groundswell comes off the back of a successful social media campaign which saw over 4400 people sign a petition started by Grill’d worker Kashmir, calling for an end to the practice of keeping young people on “traineeships” for unreasonably long periods of time in order to keep their wages low.

“Young workers are missing out by as much as $3.50 an hour when Grill’d refuses to let them complete their traineeships and move onto full wages. We’re calling on Grill’d to show that locals do matter and start looking after young workers” Keelia Fitzpatrick, Young Workers Centre coordinator said today.

“The sheer number of responses from right around Australia indicates that this is not an isolated problem. Grill’d are repeat offenders when it comes to exploiting young workers” Fitzpatrick said.

“It hasn’t even been a year since Grill’d was called out by young workers for their exploitative workplace practices and entered into a collective agreement with its workforce – yet here we are again. It is simply not good enough.” Fitzpatrick said.

Young workers will today hold an action outside of the Grill’d Carlton store to protest the ongoing use of “traineeships” as a way of stealing wages from young workers.

Young workers will invite the public and Grill’d customers to help them fill jars with bottle caps (mimicking Grill’d’s “Local Matters” program) in order to demonstrate community desire to see young workers paid properly and treated fairly at work.

Details:

Grill’d Carlton, 350 Lygon St Carlton

1:30pm to 2pm

For further information:

Amy Fitzgerald, Communications Organiser