Michael Buble Under Fire For 'Under-paying' Musos

Following on from Kylie Minogue's woes regarding her alleged underpayment of her dancers, Canadian crooner and wooer of mothers everywhere Michael Buble has found himself fighting off a worker dispute of his own.

According to The Daily Telegraph, musicians employed to accompany Buble at his most recent Rod Laver Arena show in Melbourne were paid $550 for 12 hours of work – 38 percent below award rate.

The mathematically inclined among you will probably notice that works out to a little less than $46 an hour, so the term “minimum wage” is really kind of relative but, nonetheless, the Live Performance Award exists for a reason, with Musicians' Union of Australia federal secretary Terry Noone saying that most professional musicians would expect to receive almost double what Buble's players were paid for the same work.

However, Andrew Wailes, the music director of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Orchestra – through whom Buble's string section was contracted via a US-based broker – defended the payment, telling The Telegraph:

“Yes, there are union rates that are out there for fully professional groups and I can understand all that but if we really had to pay those rates, no one would use players – that's the bottom line.

“I chose to offer a slightly lower rate than the top dollar because there are a lot of groups out there that can't afford to pay those fees and if players think that they are always going to be paid at those exorbitant rates, then they will never get any work here."

“It is not the Buble camp's fault, they didn't try to under pay or anything,” Mr Wailes continued.

“I was asked to provide a quote, they paid that in advance and the rate that I offered to my players is based on what we normally charge for a regular gig.”

Buble wrapped up the last of his four Melbourne shows last night, and heads to Sydney next to play a string of four shows from May 9. Tickets are available via Ticketek.