Weekend penalty cuts would cost workers $14 billion a year
The prospect of other industries joining the retail and hospitality sectors in lowering weekend penalty rates would cost workers a combined $14 billion in pay every year.
Research based on previously unpublished data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics done by the highly respected left-leaning Australia Institute think tank found that workers in industries outside shops, cafes, restaurants and pharmacies work on Saturdays and Sundays.
All up, it found the change would affect 2.75 million Australians, working in 108 separate industries, including hospitals and wider healthcare. Like their counterparts in retail and hospitality, they too receive weekend penalty rates.
Jim Stanford, who wrote the Australia Institute report, said rate cuts would inevitably spill into other sectors with employers demanding that it should happen in their sector as well.
"Workers in other industries should prepare themselves to confront parallel demands to reduce weekend pay penalties, and thus move toward an unlimited culture of '24-7' work," Mr Standord told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"The Fair Work Commission's decision to significantly reduce penalty rates for Sunday work in retail and hospitality sectors is important and damaging, but just the tip of the iceberg if the process of 'normalising' weekend work continues," Mr Stanford said.
"In the context of widespread wage stagnation and growing household indebtedness, the additional income generated by weekend pay penalties becomes all the more important."
He said his calculations of a $14 billion cut, based on a customised data set from the ABS' quarterly Labour Force survey, was a “conservative assumption”.
In February, the Fair Work Commission ruled thatexisting levels of Sunday penalty rates paid in retail, fast food, hospitality and pharmacy industries will be reduced from the existing levels.
This will see hospitality employees getting their Sunday pay reduced from 175 per cent to 150 per cent. Casual hospitality workers' pay will remain unchanged.
Sunday rates for fast-food employees' will go from 150 per cent to 125 per cent for full-time and part-time staff. Rates for fast food casuals will be slashed from 200 per cent to 175 per cent.
Sunday penalty rates for full and part time workers in retail will go from 200 per cent to 150 per cent of their standard hourly rate, while casuals will go from 200 per cent to 175 per cent.
According to the Australian Council of Trade Unions, shop workers will lose $4000 a year and fast food workers $2000.
Penalty rates is shaping up as the big issue in the next Federal election.
by Leon Gettler, May 2nd 2017
