Protect Retail Workers' Rights

Retail employers are proposing cutting wages by 10 per cent and scrapping penalty rates. 

Joe Hockey thinks that workers need to work at 3 am without any penalty rates as compensation to compete with online retail.

What do you think? Tell talk back and write letters to editors

The National Retail Association is applying to change retailer workers’ conditions to:

• Cut wages by 10%.  
• Scrap all penalty rates on Saturdays and for late night work; and
• Reduce penalty rates on Sundays.

If they can cut pay and penalty rates for retail workers, who’s next?
What Joe Hockey, the National Retail Association and a host of other employers in a co-ordinated campaign are seeking would undermine the minimum safety net that protects all workers.

Blaming retail workers for the woes in the retail industry is flawed logic. Employers in the sector are using the challenge of online retailing as an excuse to bring back WorkChoices by stealth.

Show your support for retail workers by writing letters to the editors and calling talk back radio.

Retail workers earn a minimum $17.03 an hour (less than $34,000 a year) with junior workers earning even less, as little as $7.67 an hour; they do not deserve to have their pay cut by 10% and their penalty rates slashed in some race to the bottom.