Two Cent Offer Spotlights IR Agenda

Date: 25 May 2006

New employees at arts and craft retail chain Spotlight are being forced to give up penalty rates and overtime for two cents an hour, says Shadow Industrial Relations Minister Stephen Smith.

A major assault on the wages and working conditions of Australian employees has been launched using the Work Choices legislation.

Spotlight, a major national retailer, is using the Howard Government's industrial relations changes to cut the take home pay and slash the working conditions of their new employees.

New Spotlight employees are being offered an Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA) that contains:

• no provision for any penalty rates
• no provision for any overtime

In compensation for drastically reduced wages and working conditions Spotlight is offering their new employees compensation of 2 cents an hour.

Under the new AWA a full time adult employee who works a roster including late night shopping and weekend work is paid around $90 a week less than a fellow employee on the existing Award.

Other wages and working conditions slashed under the new Spotlight AWA include the elimination of paid rest breaks, breaks between shifts, maximum and minimum shift lengths, and a cap on the number of consecutive days worked.

In Question Time this afternoon the Treasurer defended this attack on wages and working conditions by claiming Australia needs more flexible workplace arrangements, and people were protected by the Government's so called minimum standards.

Unfortunately for Australian workers under the Howard Government's extreme new industrial relations legislation flexibility is an extremely painful one way street. It's down.

They get their wages slashed, they lose weekends and public holidays pay loadings, and paid meal breaks and in return they get the princely sum of 2 cents an hour.

And it's all consistent with the Government's so called minimum standards. It's the law.

The Howard Government wants to send Australia down a low wage, low skilled road, as if somehow that will help us compete in the global economy.

The wage slashing Spotlight AWA is a major step on that extreme and unfair Liberal Party ideological journey.

For further information

Contact:	Courtney Hoogen
Contact Mobile:	0414 364 651

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