Pollies squirm over slashed penalty rates

HOW much your barista is getting paid on a Sunday is becoming a political football nobody wants to touch.

How much your barista is being paid on a Sunday is a topic nobody in Canberra wants to talk about. Picture: Lukas Coch / AAP

IT’S the workplace innovation that has become an industrial relations embarrassment.

Scheduled cuts to Sunday penalty rates, proposed by the independent Fair Work Commission, are causing such discomfort, most political leaders don’t want to be seen near them.

There are proposals today for the cuts to be put off for up to three years, and for them to only apply to newly hired workers, while employers are being reminded the proposed wages are minimums and that it’s not compulsory for them to cut if they don’t want to.

The Government is putting together transition proposals to lessen the pain for low-paid Sunday workers and there is significant debate over how many would be affected.

The Government is going for the lowest number, reportedly 285,000, while Labor talks of 600,000 or more.

However, the penalty reductions have added to the concerns of many workers with stunted wage growth, and who fear their penalties might be next.

And that makes them politically awkward.

Liberal senator Eric Abetz, a former employment minister, welcomes the reductions but wants them “implemented in a fair and equitable manner for current workers in the retail, hospitality and tourism sectors”.

Senator Abetz today is proposing a smooth transition protecting existing workers by grandfathering their current penalty rate entitlements for as long as they stayed with their employer.

“This approach would ensure that ‘no worker is worse off’ while allowing new opportunities for the unemployed and especially for young unemployed people,” he said in a statement.

“It would mean no existing worker would have their income or household budget adversely impacted while supporting small business and assisting the unemployed.”

However, Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek questioned the effectiveness of the measure, saying 20 per cent of workers changed jobs each year.

And there would be complications were an employee to move between outlets in the same franchise chain. Further, employers could have to keep two sets of wage books for workers with differing service.

And some could be tempted to sack existing staff to hire a new, cheaper batch, although in most instances this would be illegal.

The Government’s sensitivity to the wage cut has been highlighted by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s announcement that 457 visas, provided to temporary foreign workers, would no longer be granted to fast-food workers.

The political objective is to boast that these jobs and associated penalty rates will be kept for Australians, particularly the young, although just a few hundred of the contentious visas had been granted.

The effort by senior political figures to keep their distance from the penalty rate cut was clear in Parliament yesterday and will be again today.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Opposition front benchers “want to represent this decision by the independent umpire whose independence the Labor Party has always, before very recently, championed and defended”.

“I know they want to present this as a decision of the Government. It is not. It is a decision of the Fair Work Commission,” he said.