Page 1215 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
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of the lowest paid and most vulnerable workers in our community to take a pay cut. Not only is this unfair, but it is not sensible on an economic level.
The ACT has had a strong culture of eating out in evenings or on weekends with friends and family. The ACT has great bars and restaurants, and many customers are happy to benefit from the convenience that extended opening hours provide. Many businesses are happy to open their doors to profit from this demand. However, if weekend penalty rates are reduced, those who provide this service, who allow others to enjoy their weekends at the movies, at the bar or in a restaurant, suffer. This is not fair.
Penalty rates exist because workers who work these unsociable hours are often missing out on opportunities to take a hard-earned break, to take their children to play sport on the weekend, or to catch up with their friends and family. They deserve to be compensated. The community expects that if people forgo their evenings, weekends or public holidays to work and to provide services to others, they should be properly compensated. We all benefit from their hard work, and these workers deserve the pay they receive for the work that they are doing.
While this motion is focused on the attack on penalty rates and the potential for the erosion of workers’ rights and livelihoods, there are several other areas where the workplace rights of lower income Australians are at risk as well. Let me take you through just a few examples of the next looming threats to workers’ rights and entitlements.
The Productivity Commission has reviewed and renewed its call for the introduction of enterprise contracts to fill a perceived gap between individual arrangements and enterprise agreements. The Productivity Commission says the contracts would allow an employer to vary an award for an entire class of employees or for a group of particular employees without having to negotiate an individual flexibility arrangement with each individual or to form an enterprise agreement.
No ballot would be required in order for one of these enterprise contracts to be implemented. Furthermore, unions would be unable to represent workers in their development without prior employer consent. Finally, the agreement would be lodged with the Fair Work Commission but, unlike enterprise agreements, there would be no requirement for it to be approved by the Fair Work Commission before it came into operation. This recommendation would effectively mean that small to medium-sized businesses with more than 20 employees would be able to offer a take it or leave it statutory contract to new staff without requiring the approval of the Fair Work Commission. This is an attempt to pit workers against each other in order to reduce their costs and their rights at work.
The Productivity Commission’s recommendation for an enterprise contract is pretty much advocating a return to the Australian workplace agreements that operated under the Howard work choices regime. We all know how well that worked out. Cutting penalty rates by almost 40 per cent on Sundays, along with the commission’s recommendation to adopt these enterprise contracts, would be like setting up two Australias.
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