Big Business Launches Attack on Penalty Rates, Overtime and Smoko Breaks
Big retail businesses have backed in an attack by the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) to cut key minimum employment rights for retail workers including evening and weekend penalty rates, overtime, rostering rights and “smoko” breaks.
If the attack is successful, it will not only potentially reduce the take home pay of tens of thousands of hard-working retail managers, putting further pressure on salaries but it will strip away the right to 10-minute paid rest pauses (or “smoko” breaks as they are affectionately known) and rip away rostering rights for all retail workers. All retail workers may be left worse off.
The ARA and big business call this workplace “flexibility”. We call this greed.
In a cost-of-living crisis when big retailers have been making record profits and total retail turnover reached a staggering $36.9 billion in November 2024 (up 3% on the year), big business has no business reaching into the pockets of hard-working retail workers and ripping away their rights at work and threatening their take-home pay.
The proposed cuts to minimum Award entitlements will affect rank and file workers, and those workers on salaries and covered by the Award, such as Department and Store Managers.
The ARA is seeking to buy out all right to penalty rates, overtime, annual leave loading, allowances, breaks and protections around hours of work in exchange for a 25 per cent loading above the minimum rate of pay. With the flick of a pen a $67,000 p.a. salary will wipe away all these rights. One retailer has mischievously suggested that a click and collect manager (on a “model” roster) might receive a $7,800 per annum increase under this proposal. In real life (not a fictious “model”) there are many Managers paid well above this rate (based on their hours of work and compensation for these entitlements) and receive at least $15,000 p.a. more.
Only the SDA stands in the way against this gratuitous and nasty attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of workers.
Regarding the management exemption (buyout) rate, yesterday, SDA National Secretary Gerard Dwyer stated, “We just don’t accept arbitrary percentage figures to ‘buy out’ a whole host of entitlements,”
“These people would be in senior positions in stores and they work incredibly hard, work extremely long hours and their work is valued as it is under the award. A 25 per cent buyout might buy administrative ease, but it doesn’t provide fairness and it doesn’t provide adequate compensation for the hours that people would do.”
Now is the time for workers to be heard and to step up with their Union, the SDA, to defend their rights at work.
The SDA will lead the fight against these attacks on workers and will stand strong to protect your rights.
Fact sheets, worker actions and information on the SDA’s case to fight these unfair and greedy attacks will follow.