SDA Members are among the highest paid retail, fast food and warehousing workers in the world.

In 2022 and 2023, a claim by Australian Unions and the SDA led to historic increases to the minimum wage.

Every year, the SDA and Australian Unions push for real wage increases for workers in the Fair Work Commission’s Annual Wage Review.

The SDA has always been at the forefront of protecting and advancing your rights on public holidays.

It’s thanks to advocacy by the SDA that the majority of retail, fast food and warehousing workers have:

• Voluntary working rights on public holidays
• The right to earn public holiday penalty rates usually of 200-250%
• The right to the day off without loss of pay if you’re permanent

In 2012 and 2015, South Australia and the Northern Territory respectively became the first places in the world to recognise Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve as public holidays past 7pm.

In 2023, after years of campaigning, we won Easter Sunday as a permanent public holiday in SA and NT. A day that nearly every other state recognises as a public holiday.

Universal superannuation was fought for and won by the union movement to ensure that all workers can retire with dignity.

The SDA continues to campaign to ensure our super system works effectively for all workers.

Thanks to campaigning by the SDA, in 2022, we won the right for all workers aged 18 years old and over to be paid superannuation, no matter how much they earn each week.

In 2024, the Federal Labor Government announced superannuation would be paid on paid parental leave from July 2025, after decades of union campaigning.

Safety is union business and unions have always advocated for safer workplaces.

The SDA has been involved in pushing for strong health and safety laws to ensure workers’ safety from physical and psychosocial hazards.

The SDA continues to campaign to prevent and elminate customer abuse and violence from retail and fast food.

In 2022, harsher penalties for assaulting shop workers were introduced in South Australia to deter customer abuse.

Strong paid leave provisions were won by unions.

In the 1970s, unions won 4 weeks paid annual leave as the national standard to ensure workers can have time off without loss of pay.

Thanks to unions, 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave is a right for all Australian workers. This means every worker across Australia – including casuals – is entitled to 10 days paid leave if they’re experiencing domestic violence.

In 1996, Enterprise Bargaining was introduced in 1996 which allowed workers and their unions to negotiate directly with their employer over pay and conditions.

Collective bargaining has helped deliver better wages than individual agreements for ordinary workers.

In 2022, the SDA pushed to strengthen federal bargaining laws and make it fairer, simpler and more accessible to all workers.