SOME weekend workers in the New England and North West region will have their take-home pay slashed if they work on Sundays, after a landmark ruling by the national workplace umpire.
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In a bold move on Thursday, the Fair Work Commission announced penalty rates in the retail, fast food, hospitality and pharmacy industries would decrease from July.
But local experts believe the move will see more shops opening their doors for trading during weekends.
Full-time and part-time workers in retail will have their Sunday penalty rates dropped from 200 per cent to 150 per cent and casuals from 200 per cent to 175 per cent. Hospitality employees will face a reduction in Sunday pay from 175 per cent to 150 per cent, while casuals will remain unchanged.
Fast-food employee Sunday rates will go from 150 per cent to 125 per cent for full-time and part-time staff, and casuals will go from 200 per cent to 175 per cent.
Supermarket owner Carlo Cavallaro believes the changes to retail pay rates were positive.
“It will give us an opportunity to employ more people and not just for supermarkets but for general business,” he said.
“If you have a look at Tamworth of a weekend, a lot of coffee shops and restaurants don’t open because it’s not economical to operate. Otherwise they’d be charging the customers double.”
Business Chamber president Jye Segboer believed the pay rate decision was beneficial to Tamworth.
“One of the positives is businesses that would close on a Sunday, are likely to open due to the reduction in the rate of 25 per cent in most of those industries,” he said.
“An interesting thing to look at is those bigger retailers like Target, Kmart and Bunnings – all those places are under an EBA (enterprise bargaining agreement) anyway so they are not getting paid what the official pay scale of a Sunday should be. Most of retail isn’t going to be affected but it is the smaller retailers that are owner-operated that will be.”
Mr Segboer said the change could see more coffee shops and restaurants open their doors on weekends.
“It would increase employment, I’ve been into retail shops when there is one person working on a Sunday, it can sometimes be a struggle to get served,” he said. “This should boost employment and productivity – I don’t believe the productivity commission would make this decision if they didn’t believe the same thing.”