Chili's ex-bosses guilty

FMCA services group director Alan Joseph Noor, who owned the now defunct Australian franchise of the American restaurant chain and the manager of its Wollongong outlet, Imran Suleman, were both fined in the Federal Magistrates Court in Sydney yesterday.

It follows action by the Workplace Ombudsman after a complaint by Wollongong Chili's employee Alice McCarthy.

Employed by the company in February last year as a casual waitress, Ms McCarthy said she was not given information or advised of her rights that she had seven days to consider signing an AWA document for employment.

The court found that Mr Suleman had breached the Act and was "ignorant" of requirements to provide employees with an explanatory statement of their working conditions and to give them time to consider the AWA.

"I accept that in regard to the finding of duress against him this was inadvertent in that whilst he wanted to have the document signed, and signed quickly, he was ignorant of the employee's right not to sign," Federal Magistrate Kenneth Raphael said.

He said that had Chili's not gone into liquidation, closing down its five restaurants in March this year, he would have imposed a "substantial penalty".

"It is clear that the corporation acted high handedly with little regard to the requirements of the Act", Mr Raphael said.

"But I cannot say the same about Mr Suleman, who acted as he was instructed, checked on his instructions and had no reason to believe that they were incorrect or that he was acting in any way unlawfully."

Mr Suleman was fined $400 and ordered to pay it to Ms McCarthy.

But Mr Raphael took a sterner view of Mr Noor's conduct and ordered him to pay a $10,000 fine to the Commonwealth.

"I regard Mr Noor's conduct in relation to this whole affair as serious. His cavalier attitude to the responsibilities of a corporation employing a large number of young people cannot be condoned," he said.