2 weeks Ago By Varun Godinho
The federal government is opposing amendments to the General Retail Industry Award (GRIA) which would see retail workers able to avail of benefits such as a more flexible four-day week and an earlier finish to shifts. The amendments to General Retail Industry Award (GRIA) 2020 proposed by the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) will be considered by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) next month. The ARA represents some of the biggest retailer in the country including Coles, Woolworths, Kmart, Bunnings, Costco, Mecca and 7-Eleven stores.
The General Retail Industry Award covers many of the workers in those companies, and the changes could affect around 353,200 people. There are 17 amendments in the ARA’s proposal to the Fair Work Commission (FWC), which touch on things like penalty rates, overtime, and shift times. However, Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt will make his own application to the FWC to oppose the changes.
“Labor’s longstanding position is that workers’ wages should not go backwards,” he said in a submission to the FWC on Friday, reported Yahoo Finance. “If you give up your nights and weekends to keep Australia fed and clothed, you deserve your penalty rates. We’re focused on helping Australians earn more, while the big supermarkets and retailers are trying to cut their penalty rates.
” Under ARA’s proposals, workers who would like to work a four-day week have the option to more flexibly work 38 hours across four days, while allowing split-shifts. This, it says, would provide working parents with greater flexibility for activities such as school pickup and drop off. Workers who want to finish early can choose to take their break at the end of their shift.
“This choice and flexibility aligns with the shift towards more flexible ways of working which is in the best interests of workers and their employers,” said ARA Chief Industry Affairs Officer Fleur Brown. “Our proposal addresses areas where the GRIA is out of step with the needs of a modern retail workforce and where there are obvious, counter-productive barriers to mutually agreed flexible work arrangements.” Opponents to the ARA’s proposal claim that amendments would see workers earning $53,670 and above exempted from things like overtime rates, evening and weekend penalty rates, and annual leave loading.
It says that the new proposals also wants to reduce rest times between shifts from 12 hours to 10 hours, and allow workers to waive their meal breaks to finish their shifts early. In exchange for this, they would be given an opt-in 25 per cent boost to their base rate. However, the ARA has pushed back on these claims.
“There is no proposal to remove penalty rates, overtime or paid breaks from the award. What the ARA has proposed is that managers can opt into a pay increase if they select the voluntary salary absorption option. This will only apply to employees that agree to it,” said Brown.
“Similarly, our proposal has never suggested removing breaks from the award. We are simply proposing that any employees who prefer to take an early mark can opt into that.” The ARA has characterised the opposition to its proposal waged by unions in recent weeks around penalty rates as a “misinformation campaign” and said that “current workplace relations laws create barriers to employment outcomes.
” Some of the safeguards included in the proposals by the ARA include that any changes can be implemented by employee agreement only, a maximum of 43 hours per week will be covered by the arrangement, a minimum of 16 days off per 8-week roster, public holidays in line with GRIA and additional compensation for public holidays worked. “It’s widely accepted that the GRIA is unnecessarily complex. There’s almost 1000 individual pay rates.
The complexity and onerous detail puts an enormous burden on small to medium businesses in particular who simply want to focus on fairly rewarding their team, doing the right thing by their customers and being part of the retail sector which is a crucial element of the Australian economy,” added Brown..
