The former owner of an Auckland restaurant Shen Yuan, has been ordered by Employment Relations Authority (ERA) to pay nearly $100,000 to its former chef for multiple breaches of minimum employment standards.
The business is no longer trading and was liquidated in 2022, and this is the second time Yuan and his former restaurant business have been sanctioned by the ERA.
Shen Yuan, the sole director of BDIT Limited, trading as Hua Restaurant, was recently ordered by the ERA to pay a former chef $43,943.42 in wage arrears; $21,000 as repayment for a premium demanded from him and $20,000 in penalties.
Yuan’s wife Linlin Sun, who worked as a manager in his restaurant business, is jointly and severally liable for payment of the wage arrears and was ordered to pay $10,000 in penalties for her role in the breaches which occurred between September 2019 and September 2020.
The total amount the couple must pay in wages arrears, the premium repayment and penalties is $94,943 plus interest.
Authority member Robin Arthur ordered that the former chef, a Chinese national, must receive $9,000 of the penalties due by Yuan and his wife.
BDIT Ltd formerly operated two restaurants in Auckland – one in Newmarket and the other in Albany. The Newmarket restaurant stopped trading in October 2019 and the Albany restaurant in September 2020.
this was the second time Yuan had appeared before the ERA for similar breaches. In an earlier 2020 ERA sanction, Yuan and BDIT Ltd, trading as Hua’s restaurant, were ordered to pay their head chef $11,999.98 for outstanding wages.
The repayment order was made after Yuan failed to keep up the payments, as agreed in a record of settlement, following mediation in November 2019. Yuan had undertaken to repay the former employee $16,000 in weekly instalments of $666,67. However, he only paid $4000.02 leaving $11,999.98 outstanding.
MBIE encourages anyone who thinks they or someone else has been treated unfairly in the workplace to contact their contact centre at 0800 20 90 20