The Fair Work Commission is considering delaying its ruling on whether retailers should be able to waive penalty rates in return for offering a 35 per cent pay rise after the Albanese government flagged laws to block the move were imminent.

In what employers called “a highly unusual intervention”, new Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth wrote to FWC president Justice Adam Hatcher last week to advise she planned to legislate to ban reductions in award penalty rates “as soon as possible” and highlighted the government’s opposition to the retailers’ penalty rates case.