After days of media scrutiny, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Michaelia Cash, has refused to rule out penalty rate cuts for Australia’s lowest-paid workers under a Coalition government.
With the federal election fast approaching, working people deserve clarity from all major parties on whether they support the Australian Retailers Association’s application to the Fair Work Commission to cut penalty rates, backed by major retailers including Coles, Woolworths, Kmart and Costco.
Australian Unions are concerned that if the application is successful, cuts to penalty rates could spread to workers in other award-reliant industries, including hospitality, health care, fast food and administration.
The Fair Work Commission’s ruling could impact more than a million workers, including 360,000 permanent award reliant workers and 660,000 workers on enterprise agreements or contracts that these awards underpin.
The Retail Association’s proposal to the Fair Work Commission calls for the scrapping of overtime, evening and weekend penalty rates, work breaks or ‘smoko breaks’; and reduced rest times between shifts from 12 hours to 10 hours.
The application covers permanent workers earning above $53,670 on the retail award who would lose their penalty rates, overtime, annual leave loading, allowances, breaks and safeguards around hours of work, in exchange for a 25 per cent pay rise to buy-out award rights and protections.
The $53,670 pay threshold is only $6,000 more than the annual minimum wage of a full-time worker in Australia and well below the ‘low paid’ threshold the FWC considers when updating award wages.
Woolworth and Coles came out publicly backing the application, which would scrap rules on working hours. Concerns about ‘rostering restrictions’ were one of the reasons these companies cited for their underpayment of $500 million in workers’ wages.
The retail industry made over $7 billion in profits as of September 2024.
Quotes attributable to ACTU Assistant Secretary, Joseph Mitchell:
“Retail workers deserve answers from our politicians on their penalty rates agenda. Michaelia Cash should stop hiding from the public and rule out any penalty rate cuts if she becomes Minister. The livelihoods of working-class Australians are on the line this election.
“Australians deserve to know whose side their politicians are on. Are they on the side of big business profiteers seeking to cut working peoples’ wages, or on the side of cost-of-living relief measures that have got wages moving again?
“It’s not just retail workers that this application could impact. If this precedent spreads to other industries whose workers rely on awards, in hospitality or healthcare, more than 1 million workers could be affected.
“If the Coalition continues its practice of appointing their big business mates to the Fair Work Commission, as they did in government, this risk will intensify.
“We’ve seen what happens when governments leave big business to their own devices – workers are unfairly sacked, wages are cut, and permanent jobs become casual.
“The Coalition’s record in office is out there for people to see. Peter Dutton voted eight times in Parliament in favour of cutting penalty rates. They appear to want cuts in penalty rates for workers and free lunches for bosses.”
