A Soho restaurant is facing pressure to pay former employees who claim they have been left out of pocket, after photos of one of them standing outside it holding a protest sign went viral.
Martha’s, which launched this year with an expensive public relations push, is the focus of a campaign bringing together young EU nationals who worked there, local drag queens and trade unionists.
Former staff were due to protest outside of the restaurant on Thursday night in their pursuit of sums ranging from £45 to more than £1,500 that they say are owed to at least 15 of them.
“You can’t overestimate the impact this has had on workers,” said Callum Sellins, who worked at the restaurant until this summer as a member of the bar staff. “We’ve had people for example who were unable to pay their rent here in London after coming over for what was supposed to be a summer working to raise funds for university fees back at home. We’ve been left feeling like nobody cares about us.”
The owner of the restaurant, Conor Thomson-Moore, insisted that all staff who were due wages had been paid, blaming the row on confusion arising during a managerial handover and a former manager who he said was bad at paperwork.
“We have ensured that anyone who has reached out to us and are due to be paid have been looked after,” he said.
The workers’ case has been taken up by Zack Polanski, the Green party’s election candidate for the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, who said there was a wider problem surrounding the vulnerability of young workers from Europe in London’s hospitality sector.
“This case has been led by the workers themselves, I’ve just been advocating for them, but it is a real issue in the city,” said Polanski, who has written to Martha’s owners about the case of a young Spanish woman who stood outside the restaurant last week with a placard telling customers she had not been paid.
“I’ve heard this story time and time again separately from different members of staff who have come forward who have not yet been paid,” he said. “I’m not sure what the reasons are for this but I’m sure we can agree that when you hire people, you have a responsibility for their welfare, whether they’re from the UK, the EU or elsewhere.”
Thomson-Moore told the Guardian that he had gone out to talk to the woman and ensured she was paid.
Among those involved in backing the restaurant is Robert Newmark, who in 2016 was banned from acting as a company director for causing and allowing a company to trade while insolvent. Newmark has previously denied being involved in the running of another business, Cafe Hampstead, where staff complained of being left unpaid.
Newmark was also the owner of Beach Blanket Babylon, a Shoreditch restaurant that faced an employment tribunal claim in 2018 from a former employee who said unauthorised deductions had been made from his wages. A tribunal ordered Newmark and his co-respondents to pay back the worker.
Thomson-Moore told the Guardian that Newmark had been involved in Martha’s as a backer and had a stake of less than 20%, and he insisted he was not involved in its running or operations.
