A former Grill’d employee claims to have been sacked after questioning her pay.

According to Fairfax Media Kahlani Pyrah was employed at the Grill’d outlet in Camberwell, where she raised concerns over the company’s 2007 wage deal in favour of basic restaurant industry entitlements, and soon after found herself unemployed.

Pyrah said that she decided to look into her contract over pay concerns and found some details that she wanted to address. At this point she had been working for Grill’d for about a year.

“I am 20 years old and I’ve been working at Grill’d Camberwell in Melbourne for about a year now. I thought our pay was pretty low but I didn’t really think about it until a co-worker was sacked unfairly. My workmates know I’m in the union, so they asked if I could help,” she writes in an online petition.

“When I looked into our job contract, I realised Grill’d had been paying us below the minimum wage for a really long time. No overtime. No penalty rates. Even if we worked till 2am!

“I found out it was made under Work Choices in 2007, before the laws were changed. I also found out from the training authority that despite being on a ‘training wage’ we weren’t registered as trainees (we didn’t get any formal on-the-job training either).”

Grill’d said its workplace agreements were legally valid and ensured lawful rates of pay.

“These claims are vigorously denied by management and will be strongly defended,” the company said in a statement.

Franchise Business attempted to contact Grill’d but did not receive a response prior to publication.