Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations might think that sounded really good in here, but I challenge him to walk into Annette Harris’s lounge room and explain to her family, who are going to have to deal with $90 a week less in her pay packet, how wonderful that deal is for her and indeed for the many other women who work in the retail industry. I do not think they would be receiving it with any sort of standing ovation at all and I do not think the minister’s justification for an overall general increase in employment and in the average wage is going to give an awful lot of satisfaction or comfort to that particular family and the many others like them who will also be employed under these conditions at Spotlight and, as the contagion spreads, at other retailers in this country.

Let me just take you into a Spotlight store. I do not know if the minister has actually been in one. He might not do as much craft or sewing as some of us do on this side of the House. I can assure him that I am regularly there and if I have not got time my mother regularly drags me down there. Spotlight is a big retailer. You walk in and they have a lot of craft and hobby sections, a big material section and a home furnishing section. It is a nice place to spend an hour or two. It is a nice place to spend the $90 that you have probably just lost out of your wage and will not be able to spend in the future. What you will notice is that it is by and large staffed by women. They are, generally speaking, women in the 30 to 60 age range. Why? Because they are the ones who tend to have the practical knowledge and skills about the sorts of services and products sold by Spotlight and they can then impart that to people who come into the store. We would all recognise those who go into these stores—people who like craft, hobbies, sewing and beautifying the home, which is a tremendously well followed hobby in Australia, as people value their homes and seek to make them look better.

What we are talking about is a female intensive industry—not only Spotlight but also across the retail industry. These women generally work casual or part-time hours, and they take a great deal of pride in their work. By and large they also love going to work. They enjoy social relationships with their fellow workers and the clients, and they take a great deal of pride in what they do. What you would have heard—and what I hope the minister would have heard, but I doubt it—in Annette Harris’s comments was that a woman who works in retail and who takes pride in what she does would see herself as an exemplary employee who has pride in her work and for the business she works for, and she simply asks for a little respect in return for the labour she provides. I suspect she would think that the award that she was paid under—which was hardly an award that you might find for workers on a big mineral deposit in Western Australia such that the minister wanted to talk about—was not a bad award, and she probably felt that that the remuneration and conditions under which she worked gave her some dignity.

The new agreement does completely the opposite. It basically says: ‘We want you to continue to provide that service at the standard that you do, taking pride in the job that you do, but we take less than that pride in you and we are going to cut $90 a week out of your pay.’ That is the reality. For all the minister’s rhetoric, and for all his generalisations, that is the reality for those women in that industry who will have those sorts of agreements put before them. It is a kick for them after what is in Annette’s case, and I am sure in many others, many years of service to that particular industry. I say to the minister that it is a bad job to have to sell. He probably gave it a fairly good effort in this House, but that line will not run in the homes where they are facing these realities. It will not run, Minister. If you want to go out there and put the argument, I invite you to do so.

The company says that these women will continue under the current award and new employees will be signed up to this new agreement. Someone who works on a Saturday—and Spotlight, which services many working women, is regularly open on Thursday nights, Saturdays and Sundays—would have earned $142.80 a day under the award but now they will earn $111.40 for a typical eight-hour day. On Sundays, they would have earned $171.36, but now they will earn $111.40. So on a Sunday alone, they will earn $57 less for that days work.

The ‘good news’ for current workers is that potentially, in the future, they will get $57 a day less, but the reality is that they will not get the work. That is what will happen. These new employees that the minister boasted about—these 90 to 95 jobs that have been created—will replace those employees who work any sort of shift that provides any sort of penalty rate. So not only will they potentially lose $57 a day in the future, but right now, as soon as those new jobs are online, they will lose those shifts. They will be allowed to work only a standard nine to five job at normal rates, and the new staff will work at those lower rates on those shifts to get rid of the penalty imposts on the employer altogether.

I say to existing employees, who are obviously worried and upset that this proposal has been brought in, that they will also feel the direct and immediate impacts of this in the loss of the shifts that they rely on to get that bit of extra money, particularly in areas like Western Sydney, where the minister has indicated a new store will open—in the member for Werriwa’s area, in my area and in many areas around Sydney and the outer suburbs, where the mortgage rates are breaking the backs of many families who rely on that money to meet those commitments. This is not a bit of extra spending money; this is basic family budget money. If you go out and talk to those families, that is the reality for them.

I would suspect they were pretty sceptical to start with about the $10 they would have got in the budget cuts, but they will be far less than impressed when they see this sort of thing—

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