Well, the enormous and well-connected Australian spivocracy certainly got what it was gunning for.
After years and years of whining about how paying employees a fair wage for working unsociable hours on public holidays and weekends is antithetical to operating a business, the business lobby’s wish was granted. The Fair Work Commission determined that penalty rates for hospitality and retail workers should be cut.
People who work in the industries affected by this cut tend to be younger and poorer than the general population. It also includes many people of colour, and a number of older, low-income workers. The Australian Council of Trade Unions argues that this could hit many workers for up to $6,000 a year as compared to their current earnings.
Even the Fair Work Commission acknowledged that many people in retail and hospitality find it difficult to survive even under the current penalty rate regime. “Many of these employees earn just enough to cover weekly living expenses,” said Fair Work Commission president Iain Ross.
Evelyn, who works at Spotlight in Campbelltown, says she will lose $80 a week. “Who gets picked on every time?” she asks.
— Lane Sainty (@lanesainty) February 23, 2017
Of course – and it’s important to remember this – the Fair Work Commission’s decision isn’t the only thing that has contributed to this constant whittling down of the material conditions of low income earners and young people. The softie deals cut by the consistently pro-business industry union, the Shop Distributive & Allied Employees Association – the largest union in Australia by membership – have also played a role. The Retail and Fast Food Workers Union is trying to create a grassroots alternative to the SDA.
It’s hard not to read this is as just another assault on the conditions of young working people in this country, who find themselves at the bottom of a system with the ladder kicked out in front of them. They’re told constantly that best way to enter the property market is through hard work, while they also experience the shredding of the living wage and material protections for workers.
Sure, buying a house was always expensive. Try doing it as housing prices grossly inflate, real wages stagnate, and the people up the top do everything they can to carve out the laughably shithouse protections we have for working people and their money.
It’s obvious that the Liberal Party aren’t really on the side of workers – young or otherwise – with many MPs defending business’ push to gut the penalty rate system. But even Labor hasn’t presented the kind of iron defence that should be at the baseline of any kind of progressive economic policy. As many have pointed out, Bill Shorten said last year that he’d accept the results of the review, and that he didn’t expect they would.
Bill Shorten in June last year. #penaltyrates https://t.co/dECWq4fXJB pic.twitter.com/IUOdfHqWTX
— Rick Morton (@SquigglyRick) February 23, 2017
Despite the fact this is pitched as a measure intended to help the small business battler, it’s not the small business owners who benefit most from this. The strongest lobbyists for change were the big retailers like JB Hi-Fi and Myer. You may remember the Fairfax article where captains of industry were polled on their penalty rate opinions while literally on a goddamn yacht.
For young workers struggling to pay rent in a grossly inflated housing market, the loss of up to $6,000 a year in income due to a penalty rate reduction is not a small problem. Blame for reductions in retail profits gets laid on worker wages, despite the fact so many employees still live on a knife edge.
Adam Bandt, the Greens MP for Melbourne, spoke on his party’s intention to address the rate reduction through legislation, pointing to its impact on young workers. “This cut in penalty rates is a cut in people’s wages and it will hit young people especially hard… Coffees won’t get any cheaper on Sundays but young people will find it harder to pay the rent,” he said.
And if you think this is a reasonable reduction, and it ends there, you couldn’t be more wrong. This is just one battle in a much longer war – a lopsided economy which favours the few and relies on prioritising profit over meeting basic human needs. Lobbyists within the industries not covered by today’s decision are working just as hard to screw young workers out of their hard-earned.
Photo: The Simpsons.
