THE Fair Work Commission ruling on Sunday penalty rates, handed down on Thursday, should only be part of this story.
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The commission appears to have taken its lead from a Productivity Commission report in 2015 that called for Sunday penalty rates to be cut and brought in line with Saturday rates.
As a result, employees working in the retail, fast food, hospitality and pharmacy industries can all expect to see their Sunday wages cut from July 1.
The argument from employer groups has long been that high Sunday penalty rates – up to double time for some employee groups – no longer reflect community standards and have become a disincentive for shops to open their doors.
The alternate view from workers and unions was that Sunday penalty rates were an appropriate reward for the (usually young) employees who put up their hands to work unsociable hours.
The problem was, that was always going to be a tough argument to win in a changing world.
High Sunday penalty rates came in at a time when few shops opened after noon on Saturday and Sunday was a day set aside for church and family.
It was a time when people could not shop from the comfort of their homes and Sunday brunch had not yet been invented. That’s no longer the world we live in.
So the Fair Work Commission has made the right decision in reducing high Sunday penalties, but that should not be the end of the debate.
The spirit of Thursday’s ruling should not be to reduce an employer’s overall wages bill but, rather, to ease the peaks and troughs across the week.
The workers impacted by the Fair Work Commission ruling are among the lowest paid and most vulnerable in society and they deserve protection.
If they are going to take home less for a Sunday shift, it’s only fair that they stand to take home more for working other days of the week.
The debate must now turn to increasing the minimum wages for workers in the retail, fast food, hospitality and pharmacy industries to give them a chance to keep their heads above water.
If not, then Thursday’s ruling will simply become a case of robbing poor workers to boost their bosses’ bottom line. Surely that’s not the country we want to be living in.
