Penalty rate cuts could affect thousands

New data from Australian Unions has revealed that 5,000 Central Coast workers could lose $7,000 a year as employer attacks on penalty rates spread beyond the retail sector to target workers in administration, banking and finance.

ACTU President Michele O’Neil was in Gosford on April 14 to meet with concerned local workers and speak out against the employer proposals.

Key employer lobby groups have made submissions to the Fair Work Commission to remove penalty rates and other award protections in exchange for a one-off pay increase.

Analysis by the Australian Services Union shows the proposals would cost individual clerical workers up to $12,000 per year in wage cuts.

If upheld, workers’ break times, shift breaks, hours of work, overtime payments, and penalty rates would also be scrapped.

A receptionist on $67,000, doing six hours of overtime a week, would stand to lose $300 a week, or close to $16,000 a year under the proposal.

A senior administrative worker working Tuesday to Saturday each week would lose $7,000 each year.

O’Neil said the employers’ bid, led by the Australian Industry Group, would undermine the pay and conditions of about 720,000 clerical workers nationwide.

Employers have filed similar applications to strip away penalty rates for workers covered by the Banking, Finance and Insurance Award.

Workers in these sectors typically receive hundreds of dollars each week in penalty rates to help them get by.

The latest attacks on penalty rates comes as the Australian Retailers Association, with the support of some of Australia’s largest retailers, including Coles, Woolworths, Bunnings, 7-Eleven, Kmart and Mecca, are seeking to cut penalty rates for an estimated 200,000 retail workers.

If the application is upheld, individual retail workers stand to lose $5,000 a year in wages earned through penalty rates, allowances and overtime, or more than $1B in total.

The Retailers Association wants penalty rates, overtime and other entitlements removed for permanent workers, in exchange for a one-off pay rise to buy out award protections.

Overall, more than one million Australians face wage cuts if penalty rates are removed from retail, finance and admin awards.

Employment and Workplace Relations Minister, Murray Watt has intervened in the case in support of retail workers, to stop the abolition of penalty rates.

Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, has yet to intervene in either case and has not ruled out allowing cuts to penalty rates.

“Central Coast workers need to earn penalty rates to stay ahead of the price pressures we’ve all experienced,” O’Neil said.

“People deserve to be paid fairly for staying back or working anti-social hours at night and weekends.

“Penalty rates help regional workers in retail, admin, and finance – most of whom are women – to earn enough income to support themselves and their families.

“During the last Coalition government, Peter Dutton voted against protecting penalty rates eight times, after the Fair Work Commission cut penalty rates in similar circumstances in 2017.”