Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, madam chair, and I did ask that it be directed through you. Senator Farrell claimed yesterday, although it wasn't picked up in the Hansard, that we have some of the highest paid retail workers in the world. That may be the case now given that the substandard wages deal between the SDA and Coles has now been replaced.

An article by Ben Schneiders and Royce Millar, who did some fantastic work exposing the truth behind the deal, in The Sydney Morning Herald on 12 August 2018 said that, 'Coles workers have now received a huge pay rise after the cosy deal between the SDA and Coles was scrapped.' The article highlighted that:

Both Coles and the Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees Association (SDA) had fought for years to keep the previous deal which paid tens of thousands of workers less than the minimum rates of the award, the basic wages safety net.

The old deal slashed - or did not pay at all - penalty rates and other entitlements in exchange for modest increases in hourly pay.

In 2016, the full bench of the Fair Work Commission found that deal failed the "better off overall test", the legal test that workers have to be paid more than the award.

More than half the workforce was underpaid, evidence from Coles' own expert showed.

It took nearly another two years of legal wrangling after that Fair Work ruling for a new agreement to take effect. That deal now largely reflects the minimum rates of the award.

Nelio Da Silva, who has worked for more than five years at Coles, now gets paid an extra $140 a week under the new deal.

He recently joined the new union, the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, whose secretary Josh Cullinan exposed the Coles deal in 2015.

That's what The Sydney Morning Herald had to say.

The Retail and Fast Food Workers Union has also done some great work in exposing the dodgy deals that the SDA has done over the decades with big business. Their analysis shows that common across many retail employees were these: evening penalty rates of 25 per cent removed; application of shift penalty rates reduced or removed; Saturday penalty rates of 25 per cent removed, and that's 35 per cent for casual staff; Sunday penalty rates of 100 per cent removed or reduced; casual loadings reduced from 25 to 20 per cent; junior rates for 17-year-old staff reduced from 60 to 55 per cent; junior rates for—