Brisbane hospitality HR manager could be referred to police as Fair Work tosses out pay deal

The human resources manager for Queensland’s Mantle Group Hospitality empire may be referred to the Australian Federal Police after the Fair Work Commission found he intentionally provided false evidence in support of a contentious pay deal covering young and inexperienced workers.

Mantle Group Hospitality (MGH), which operates high-profile pubs and cafes across Brisbane and Sydney, rose to national prominence in May last year when the Fair Work Commission (FWC) savaged its use of a 22-year-old ‘zombie’ agreement excluding casual workers from earning penalty rates on weekends and public holidays.

The FWC described the agreement as “staggering”, calling it a “disgrace” which left young workers underpaid compared to their peers.

Before that public excoriation, MGH tried forging a new pay deal for staff — the Hot Wok Agreement, which asked workers to “volunteer” their labour on weekends, nights, and public holidays without accruing penalty rates.

After initially expressing concerns employees would not benefit under the Hot Wok Agreement compared to the relevant industry award, thereby failing the better off overall test, Hot Wok submitted new wage calculations to the FWC. It approved the agreement in late July 2021.

The United Workers Union (UWU) appealed the decision in May of 2022.

After reviewing the decision, the FWC in October 2022 found it could actually leave employees earning as much as 47.5% less on public holidays compared to the underlying award rate.

At that time, it also allowed the UWU to amend the terms of its appeal, with the union claiming it had come across relevant new information surrounding the Hot Wok Agreement’s creation.

The union leveled startling claims in its amended appeal: that MGH human resources manager Darren Latham had falsified documents it submitted to the FWC backing the Hot Wok Agreement, and that four of the employees who voted to approve the agreement held management positions and would not have been covered by it anyway.

“Further, it was submitted [by the UWU], none of them could recall with any clarity anything about having had meetings to discuss the Hot Wok Agreement, and it was more likely than not that such meetings never in fact occurred, contrary to the sworn statement of Mr Latham in his Form F17 declaration,” the FWC wrote in its Thursday decision.

“They all asserted a lack of capacity to recall events relevant to the making of the Hot Wok Agreement in 2021 to a degree which we consider to be, as the UWU put it, frankly incredible,” the Commission wrote, adding, “There were also numerous inconsistencies, improbabilities and evasions in the evidence given by these witnesses.”

As a result, the Hot Wok Agreement “is incapable of satisfying the approval criteria”.

The FWC said it will hand the findings to the general manager of the Commission to determine if Latham’s conduct should be referred to the Australian Federal Police.

“The process for considering applications for the approval of enterprise agreements would break down entirely if, in every case, the Commission was required to “go behind” and investigate for itself the truth of the matters asserted in such declarations,” it said.

“A person who knowingly gives false or misleading information or knowingly produces a false or misleading document in support of an application for approval of an enterprise agreement is guilty of an offence” under criminal law, it added.

Maurice Blackburn principal Giri Sivaraman, who represented the UWU, said the findings were extraordinary.

“In over 20 years practising in this area I’ve never seen the commission find all of the company’s witnesses to not be credible and to consider referring the chief of HR to the police,” he said in a statement.

“It’s a staggering and sad indictment on the HR practices of Mantle group.”

The company will now conduct an audit of its wage payments, opening the door to significant back-payments to staff once covered by the quashed agreement, Sivaraman added.

In a statement provided to The Brisbane Times, a Mantle Group spokesperson will apply to “have all of the decisions of the FWC quashed because of bias,” after the commission previously rejected its push to recuse the bench over claims of apprehended bias.

“Hot Wok is confident that it will be successful in having these unfair and biased comments overturned,” the spokesperson added.

Mantle Group has been approached for comment.