1,000 signatures reached
To: Andre Chaaya, Five Star Pub Company
#MakeTheBayPay. The Bay Hotel's missing millions belong to its workers.
Workers from the Bay Hotel in Mordialloc have been left jobless and owed more than a million dollars by their boss.
In February this year Bay Hotel's 35 workers began noticing their pay was late. Then it stopped. But they kept on working, because they didn’t know what else to do.
Weeks and weeks went by without staff being paid. Many staff are owed about eight weeks of wages, as well as all their annual leave and long service leave. One worker is owed $13,000.
The pub finally closed its doors in early May and now these workers have learned that, for much of the last five years, their employer wasn’t paying superannuation into their accounts. This money has been stolen from them too.
Mid-last year Andre Chaaya, their boss, sold the Bay Hotel’s bricks and mortar for $6.15 million and began leasing it back from a new landlord. He has not given workers a straight answer about what happened to that money.
We are calling on Mr Chaaya to pay up. He needs to use these missing millions to pay his workers. Now.
Why is this important?
Our boss, Andre Chaaya, kept promising us that we would get paid. But each week, no money came. Now we realise that was just another lie he told us.
As weeks turned into months, rent fell behind, the bills piled up, and grocery shopping wasn’t done. At least one worker was left homeless. One worker was reduced to eating plain rice.
A worker has cancelled an overseas trip to a wedding of one her best friends because she doesn’t have any money.
Suppliers kept calling the pub, demanding to know when they would get paid. Cheques bounced. A major brewery stopped delivering. The coffee machine was repossessed. Our boss disappeared and we had to keep making excuses for him.
Last year Mr Chaaya sold the pub’s building and planned to use the $6.15 million from the sale of the property reinvest in his pub business. Where is that money? Why hasn't he used it to pay us?
Please stand with us and insist that Mr Chaaya pay us as his first priority.