The Retail Traders’ Association of Western Australia has scored wins for retailers under Fair Work Australia’s changes to the Modern Retail Award.
With supporting submissions from the National Retailers Association and the Australian Retailers Association, the RTA gained the following successes. Several further items proposed by the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) were rejected by FWA.
• Ordinary hours were extended from 6.00pm to 11.00pm on weeknights.
• Part-time workers were allowed working additional hours without overtime (unless hours exceed 38 hours per week), returning rostering flexibility to employers, providing it is mutually agreed with the employee.
• Uniform laundry allowance has been restricted to one single payment per week, reducing the expected wage bill increase for retailers.
• Sunday penalties for casual loading were dropped from 225% to the full time rate of 200%.
• The practice in WA of paying employees for RDOs that coincide with a public holiday has been stopped.
Although these are impressive small steps towards reducing some expected wage increases, FWA has failed to fully recognise the demands of today’s modern shopper or understand that retail is a seven days a week industry.
While FWA’s amendments give relief to retailers who keep their doors open on late nights to meet consumer demand, the Award still penalised retailers for opening on weekends. After some 18 months of combined efforts to represent retailers’ interests throughout every step of the award modernisation process, FWA is only just beginning to listen to retail concerns about the Modern Retail Award’s inflexibility for retailers to respond to consumer demand without facing archaic penalty rates.
FWA’s decision to award casual employees the same rate for working on a Sunday as permanent employees and reducing the penalty rate from 225% to 200% offered retailers minimal relief from an increased wage cost but the Modern Retail Award still fails to recognise the truly contemporary and highly flexible world in which retailers need to operate in order to survive - penalty rate structures are still based on a Monday to Friday working week when weekends are the busiest trading days.
On one hand, retailers are being pushed to stay open on weekends to meet consumer demand, but on the other they’re being punished for it with an archaic penalty rate structure.
FWA also accepted the application to allow part-time employees to agree to work additional hours without the payment of overtime unless their hours exceed 38 in the week.
FWA approved the application for a uniform laundry allowance, but has restricted this to one single payment
per week of:
• $6.25 for full time employees
• $1.25 per shift for part time and casual employees
This was previously $6.25 per garment, per week, making no distinctions between full timers working a five day week and a casual working one day a week. Sometimes multiple garments would be issued and so multiple payments would have had to have been made to each employee. While this may seem like a minor adjustment, it is one that could potentially save small retailers thousands of dollars per year.
The RTA commends FWA for rejecting outdated requests from the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA Union), including calls for voluntary work on public holidays, limiting the ability for employers to request employees to take annual leave and the payment of wages to employees on RDO where that coincides with a public holiday.