Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to put on the record this week, before too much more time passes, a reaction to a speech given in this place by Senator McKim yesterday. He used a speech on the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Bill 2017 to launch an extraordinary and unwarranted attack on a very successful and important part of our industrial relations architecture here in the country, the SDA—the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association—one of Australia's largest trade unions.

Senator McKim alleged that the SDA was actively colluding with big business to undercut its members on their pay and conditions. This is just an outrageous claim to be making in this place. To use parliamentary privilege to make such a false claim was an insult to this place, and certainly an insult to all those who are working in the retail sector and to all those delegates who are working to make sure that, through the SDA, the conditions of work that they have to work in are being attended to and that they are being defended properly by the union.

The SDA has negotiated very strong wage deals for hundreds and thousands of members since its inception. To have Senator McKim rise in this place and claim that the SDA, the union that looks after workers in the retail sector, has undermined penalty rates is absolutely an outrageous and false claim. In fact, it was the SDA and United Voice which bore the cost of the penalty rates decision and both the SDA and United Voice are also currently bearing the cost of the review into the decision and are continuing to fight the cut to penalty rates. That's what they do. They have been looking after workers and making sure they get fair and good conditions for a very, very long time. They continue to do that work, despite the comments from Senator McKim yesterday.

We need to get some facts on the table here. In Victoria, it was the SDA that established double time on Sundays in its modern award—a fantastic benefit for many workers, but particularly for women workers. Women, when getting local employment in the area in which they live, find that a shop is a place in which you can recommence that journey into work. And for so many young people, this a vital part of their entry into the workforce, and they need to have the protection of a great union that is there to support young people getting fair and generous wages for the skills and opportunities that they are developing for themselves.

The SDA has been able to secure some of the highest pay rates for fast-food workers in the world. That is a great outcome for our local economy as people go to work, get fair and decent wages, take their wages into the local community and pay into other small businesses to keep that economy moving around. The more we take out of the pockets of low-paid workers, the worse it is for our local economy, and that's absolutely clear to Australians who live in regional Australia in particular.

Because of the work of the SDA, at McDonald's, a full-time senior weekly wage is $50 to $65 a week higher than the fast-food award, and the enterprise bargaining agreement contains superior conditions, such as things that matter to people who are working—things like guaranteed minimum shifts of 10 hours per week to allow for planning and budgeting; shorter maximum shifts; and, when needed, compassionate leave, study leave and domestic violence leave. These things are part of the civility of our country, and they have been achieved by the union that Senator McKim chose to malign yesterday. The McDonald's EBA also contains a very strong annual wage increase between 3.5 per cent and 4.5 per cent.

This disappointing criticism only highlights the fact that the Greens party is not loyal to hardworking members of our economy, people who are participating in the retail sector. They are supporting rogue unions. The unions they seem to support in opposition to the SDA were nowhere to be seen when the 7-Eleven cases needed to be prosecuted and advanced in the public place. The 7-Eleven cases that the community would be aware of, which were so prominent last year, were in fact brought to attention and prosecuted on behalf of those workers by the SDA. They fought for people who had no association with the union but who needed a strong voice for justice and fairness, in the public place. So I will not have the record of Senator McKim stand against the outstanding work of the SDA over many, many decades for ordinary, hardworking Australians who the Labor Party will always look after. (Time expired)