Page 3179 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 9 November 2021
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success story—helping to protect workers in these industries, who frequently move between employers.
I believe that we need to do more. This scheme needs to be expanded to include the contract catering industry. We need to look closely at what other industries this model can be applied to as well.
The contract catering industry is an industry that involves physically demanding work, and it is a highly transient industry. Job mobility in accommodation and food services is the highest in the country and it is increasing year on year. Last year the job mobility rate was at 17.1 per cent. With such massive turnover in the industry, expanding portable long service leave to cover these workers is essential.
Currently, in order to access long service leave, employees in the ACT need to work for the same company for at least seven years. Unfortunately, in this day and age, obtaining such long service at a single company is too hard for many workers. It is rare for workers in an industry like catering to stay with one company for that long. Even if they do manage it, companies often do their best to avoid having to pay for workplace entitlements like long service leave.
Tactics such as phoenixing can be used by companies to avoid their obligations to employees. Phoenixing is where a company will declare bankruptcy and shut down, only to re-emerge under a new name. This can leave workers without their leave entitlements after years of hard work. This system is not fair. We need to be doing more to protect our workers. Expanding the portable long service leave scheme to include contract caterers is part of this.
Expanding portable long service leave will allow people who work in contract catering to accrue long service leave even if they switch between employers. An employee could work for several different companies within the contract catering industry and still accrue long service leave if they work for a total of seven years.
This change will make a huge difference to workers who move between employers. It will help to address work-life balance issues, to give back long service leave entitlements to vulnerable members of our community. This is not some radical, new idea or huge policy shift. This is simply the next step in ensuring that all workers have equal access to leave that they should be entitled to.
We should not stop with contract caterers, in my opinion. The ACT has always led the way on these types of reforms, and it is time to look beyond what we have already achieved. There are many more industries where it is unusual for an employee to stay with the same employer for more than seven years.
Hospitality is a great example. I think we all know just how transient hospitality is, from working in the industry ourselves, or maybe our partners or friends do; maybe you even have kids that do so right now. Hospitality is a flexible, casualised and transient industry where employees frequently move from maybe a bartending job at a local pub to working the floor of a restaurant in the city.
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