Page 270 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 February 2016
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It is also fair to note—again Ms Burch touched on this—that many people in the retail and hospitality industry, especially young workers, rely on penalty rates to earn a living wage. These workers are often already on a low wage, and any cuts to their penalty rates would have a big impact on their take-home pay packet.
While I understand the pressures faced by small businesses in line with the move to seven-day service expectations, there are a range of ways the pressure can be taken off small business without changes to the rights and protections of workers. It is incumbent upon all political parties to come up with policy initiatives that support small business. We know that they are very much a driver of our economic engine, both here in Canberra and across the country. But there are other ways to assist small business rather than detracting from the pay packets of workers, especially those who are relying on penalty rates to earn that living wage.
I will keep my remarks brief today. It is important to maintain penalty rates for low-paid workers in Canberra for the two key reasons I have outlined. I am sure this matter will get further airing as the year goes on. I will be very interested to see where the national discussion goes on this, but I can indicate that, from a Greens point of view, we are committed to helping preserve the rights of workers to access penalty rates.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Minister for Planning and Land Management, Minister for Racing and Gaming and Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations) (3.39): I thank Ms Burch for bringing this matter of public importance on today. I know that Ms Burch had a history of working shiftwork as a nurse in earlier times, and I have spent many years working shiftwork as well; I know the importance of penalty rates, and also the impact of shiftwork on family life.
Penalty rates have been an important feature of the Australian industrial relations system for over 100 years, having been established by the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1909, only eight short years after our nation’s federation.
It was in 1909 that Justice Higgins of the High Court awarded penalty payments valued at time-and-a-half of ordinary payments be made for work on the seventh day in any week, an official holiday and “all time of work done in excess of the ordinary shift during each day of twenty hours.” These penalty rates were awarded firstly as compensation to employees being made to work at inconvenient times, but secondly to act as a deterrent against long or abnormal hours being used by employers. The reasoning behind this judgement was the belief that employees should be appropriately compensated for working long shifts at inconvenient and unsociable hours.
This was reaffirmed almost 40 years later by the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, which decided that Saturday work should be paid at 125 per cent of the base rate of pay and people working on a Sunday should receive double pay. Shortly afterwards, in 1950, the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission noted:
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