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May 16, 2024 10:29
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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Death to the SDA.
quote:Hamburgled: McDonald's, Coles, Woolworths workers lose in union pay deals
May 19, 2016 - 7:07PM
Ben Schneiders, Nick Toscano, Royce Millar
Burger giant McDonald's is underpaying its Australian workers tens of millions of dollars a year under a cosy deal struck with Labor's largest union affiliate that excludes weekend penalty rates.
A Fairfax Media investigation has found the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) negotiated a 2013 agreement under which some McDonald's employees are paid nearly one-third less than the award – the minimum pay and conditions safety net.
Nationwide, workers at McDonald's – Australia's second largest employer – appear to be out of pocket by at least $50 million a year. Those affected include young workers who earn as little as $10.08 an hour.
The findings are based on hundreds of payslips, obtained by Fairfax Media, and the leaking of an entire store's roster that shows 63 per cent of workers at a large Sydney outlet are paid less than the award.
Brigid Forrester until recently worked up to four shifts a week at a McDonald's store in Perth, including Sunday evenings from 4pm to 10pm. She did not get penalty rates.
"The weekends were tiring, terrible shifts to work," she said. "I would always joke with people about how bad our pay was, but I was struggling to pay rent, and I have to pay for petrol and for parking at university."
Sub-standard deals done by the famously employer-friendly union may be responsible for up to half a million workers in the wider fast food and retail sectors losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
The union is separately locked in a similar controversy surrounding its deal with Coles – the nation's third largest employer. The supermarket chain has since admitted tens of thousands of its casual workers have been underpaid.
The union's agreement with the country's biggest employer, Woolworths, is almost identical to the Coles deal.
News of the underpayments comes at an uncomfortable time for Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, who has made the defence of penalty rates a key part of his election campaign, saying this week "only a Labor government can be trusted to protect our penalty rates system".
SDA insiders have expressed concerns to Fairfax Media about a string of sub-award deals sanctioned by the union leadership in recent years.
It comes amid mounting concern about deteriorating workplace standards and the scandals around 7-Eleven and the exploitation of temporary foreign workers.
The Fairfax analysis of the McDonald's pay deal was done in conjunction with Josh Cullinan, a senior official at the National Tertiary Education Union, working in a personal capacity, whose research unearthed the Coles scandal.
"While debate rages about penalty rates it ought be remembered that hundreds of thousands of workers have already had their penalty rates stripped by these bad agreements which should never have been approved," said Mr Cullinan.
The McDonald's national agreement, struck in 2013, contains no weekend penalty rates and restricts late-night rates to a 10 per cent loading from 1am to 5am.
Under the national fast-food industry award, penalty rates of 25 per cent apply on Saturday and 50 per cent on Sunday (75 per cent for casuals), as well as higher night shift loadings from 9pm to 5am.
McDonald's has a mainly young, often female, workforce. It is well known internationally for its antipathy to unions, and has few other union agreements across its vast empire. It is under pressure internationally over pay and conditions.
The SDA, the country's largest private sector union, is renowned for its close relationship with employers and its conservative, Catholic, social agenda, including opposition to same sex marriage.
The McDonald's agreement has delivered the SDA thousands of new and potential members, which bolster its clout inside the ALP and, therefore, in debates on social/moral issues.
Under the McDonald's/SDA deal, workers mostly receive slightly higher hourly wages than the award, but not enough to cover the penalties most of those who do any night or weekend work would otherwise receive.
An analysis of the roster for McDonald's Cremorne store in Sydney, and pay details of 170 non-managerial staff shows that the worst-off employees almost always worked some weekend or night shifts. Combined, the underpaid workers at the store were $107,000 a year worse off than under the award.
"The analysis shows beyond doubt that two in three workers are worse off," said Mr Cullinan. "It doesn't matter if they are young or old, if they are casual or non-casual. They are all worse off."
McDonalds spokesman Chris Grant said it was "wrong" to suggest McDonalds underpaid its workers.
He said the union deal provided a higher base pay rates across the entire week "as opposed to penalty rates that only apply to limited timeframes", and included benefits beyond the award, such as better leave and annual pay increases. "We are a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week business and our employees tell us they love the flexible working hours we provide."
The McDonald's agreement was approved in 2013 by the Fair Work Commission. Under the Fair Work Act, agreements are meant to leave workers "better off overall" when compared to the award.
Working closely, the SDA and McDonald's were able to largely skip around that legal requirement by signing the agreement in mid-2013 and measuring it largely against archaic state awards.
That locked in much lower wages for a four-year period, conservatively saving McDonald's $200 million.
The Coles underpayment row is likely to be resolved in coming weeks with the full bench of the Fair Work Commission set to rule on a challenge by Mr Cullinan to the Coles/SDA agreement, which covers 77,000 workers.
That challenge has also delayed talks between the union and Woolworths over a new workplace agreement.
SDA national secretary Gerard Dwyer disputed the findings of the Fairfax analysis and said McDonald's workers had voted for "significantly higher base rates of pay" to compensate for the lack of penalty rates.
"In the vast majority of cases, this leaves the worker better off overall," he said. "McDonald's workers are among the best paid fast food workers in the world."
Woolworths spokeswoman Claire Kimball defended its existing agreement, stressing it had been approved by the Fair Work Commission. She confirmed Woolworths was "monitoring" the Coles case.
The Fair Work Commission at the time said it was satisfied requirements for approval of the McDonald's 2013 agreement had been met, and that the company had provided indicative work hours and pay rates to show workers were better off. The SDA did not challenge its approval.
A spokeswoman for for the commission said it had made important improvements over the past year to the way it manages agreement applications.
The Fair Work Commission has done a lot of work in the past 12 months to improve both the timeliness and certainty of agreement applications," she said.
"We have also published a large number of resource materials on the website to assist parties when negotiating agreements."
e: f,b
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May 19, 2016 10:48
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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The houses of 20 NBN staffers have been raided by the AFP throughout the day as well.
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May 19, 2016 12:05
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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https://twitter.com/Kieran_Gilbert/status/733401756688736256
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May 19, 2016 23:36
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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so you hate yourself more
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May 20, 2016 08:39
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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https://twitter.com/joshgnosis/status/733567018553643008
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May 20, 2016 09:08
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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Who were the four media organisation's? The ABC was one, and the other 3 aren't going to like it much either- this is a taste of things to come with any leak the Liberal party dosn't like.
The ABC, the AFR, the SMH and the Oz.
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May 20, 2016 10:37
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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quote:Labor has complained to the Australian federal police that an NBN staff member disseminated photos taken during Thursday night’s police raid on the former communication minister Stephen Conroy’s office which could have included the party’s broadband policy.
The federal Labor party was engaged in a legal wrangle with the AFP for most of Friday and has secured agreement that the material seized in the dramatic late-night raids, part of an investigation into damaging leaks regarding the National Broadband Network, is covered by parliamentary privilege and will be sealed and stored by the clerk of the Senate, probably until parliament resumes after the election campaign.
The AFP agreed the NBN staff member, who was present during the raids and taking photographs, would download the photos he took, store them on a USB drive to be included with the sealed material, and then delete them from his mobile phone.
But then the AFP advised Labor that the staff member had already disseminated the images, prompting an angry letter from Labor’s lawyer, Paul Galbally. Labor sources say the party’s broadband policy was among the documents the AFP looked through during the lengthy raids.
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May 20, 2016 11:25
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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https://twitter.com/adamzwar/status/733160012176990208
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May 21, 2016 03:01
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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https://twitter.com/australian/status/733816602462801920
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May 21, 2016 08:11
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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He has long ago, we're just waiting for someone to brave the exclusion zone and drop the concrete sarcophagus on to him
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May 21, 2016 08:36
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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quote:Coles could be forced to renegotiate pay deal with thousands of workers after Fair Work ruling
By the National Reporting Team's Sam Clark, Josie Taylor and Dan Oakes
A Coles worker has won a David and Goliath battle against his employer and one of Australia's most powerful unions, potentially forcing the supermarket giant to renegotiate wages and conditions of thousands of employees.
Duncan Hart, a student who works part-time at a Coles supermarket in Brisbane, took action in the Fair Work Commission last year.
He claimed the enterprise bargaining agreement between Coles and his union, the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), left thousands of workers worse-off than they would be under the award, and was therefore invalid.
In a decision published on Tuesday morning, the Fair Work Commission sided with Mr Hart and ruled that the Coles EBA, which covers some 77,000 employees, failed what is known as the better off overall test (BOOT).
Mr Hart said the decision was a victory not just for Coles employees, but for retail workers more broadly.
"It shows that you can't just cut penalty rates, increase the overall base rate and actually still say that people are better off overall," Mr Hart said.
"There will be people who work those unsociable hours who will be worse-off and that's what we saw with the Coles agreement and it was tens of thousands of Coles workers that were worse-off."
The commission gave Coles 10 days to remedy the failings in the EBA before it quashed its original approval of the workplace agreement.
The decision could force Coles to renegotiate wages and conditions for its workforce of 77,000 employees.
The Coles agreement in question, which was approved by the Fair Work Commission in July last year, mandated a higher hourly base rate for supermarket workers, but cut penalty rates for weekends and nights.
Mr Hart argued that this left a substantial proportion of the Coles workforce worse-off than if they were paid under the existing award.
For a workplace agreement to be legal, all employees must be made better off when an agreement is compared to the award.
Supermarket overvalued some benefit to employees: commission
Coles argued before the commission that a series of other employee benefits contained in the workplace agreement outweighed any loss in penalty rates.
These benefits included blood donor leave, emergency services leave and an extra five minutes for meal breaks when employees worked shifts of more than four hours.
However, the commission ruled that Coles had overvalued these benefits when weighed against the cuts to penalty rates.
"Overall we consider the provisions in the agreement to be beneficial for employees but the level of benefit is not large," the commissioners ruled.
"We are not satisfied that a consideration of all benefits and detriments under the agreement results in each employee and each prospective employee being better off overall under the agreement compared to the award.
"It follows that we are not satisfied that the agreement passes the BOOT."
Coles have been given until June 10 to respond to the decision.
A Coles spokesman said in a statement that the company's workplace agreements had delivered wage rises above inflation for more than a decade.
"Coles' current agreement was approved by the Fair Work Commission in 2015. It delivered an average increase of 3 per cent in base rates, maintained penalty rates from the previous agreement and brought six complex agreements into a simple, easy-to-understand document," the statement said.
Decision could have wide ramifications for retail sector
Professor John Howe, workplace law expert at the University of Melbourne, said that today's decision would increase scrutiny of similar workplace deals that come before the commission in the future.
"The full bench has sent a clear signal to members of the commission and parties to enterprise agreements that it is not enough that a majority of employees support the agreement — the interests of those employees likely to be most adversely affected by the agreement have to be taken into account." he said.
"We're also going to see greater public scrutiny of pay deals between the SDA and other major food chains like Woolworths and McDonalds."
Woolworths is in the final stages of negotiating a new workplace agreement with the SDA.
Union deal branded 'atrocious'
In a statement the SDA's national secretary Gerard Dwyer said today's decision related to a small number of workers.
"The decision today recognises that while some changes need to be made, the agreement as a whole is solid," he said.
"This was always a technical debate about a small cohort of workers who may have inadvertently missed out on the significant improvements that the vast majority of Coles workers would have secured under this agreement."
However Mr Hart, a union member since 2006, disputed Mr Dwyer's assessment of the decision and said that tens of thousands Coles workers had been left worse-off by the deal.
"I think that what the SDA have done in this case has been pretty atrocious, there's no real other way to describe it," Mr Hart said.
Death to the SDA.
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May 31, 2016 07:36
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May 16, 2024 10:29
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- adamantium|wang
- Sep 14, 2003
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Missing you
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quote:Protester awarded $13,400 after police officer made up charge at Martin Place rally
May 31, 2016 - 4:06PM
Rachel Olding
Several NSW Police officers have been savaged in court for allegedly grabbing the breasts and neck of an anti-Reclaim Australia protester, then covering their actions up by deleting evidence, making up a false charge against her, lying under oath and attacking her in court.
Simone Renae White, 41, a social worker, attended Martin Place last July for a counter rally to the Reclaim Australia demonstration.
She was arrested by Senior Constable John Wasko who alleged Ms White had assaulted him in the execution of his duty.
He said that, as a line of police were shepherding a line of protesters through Martin Place, Ms White turned back at him with her elbow up.
However, after a year-long court battle, a magistrate has thrown out the charge and taken the unusual step of forcing the police to pay Ms White's legal costs because their arrest, investigation and subsequent prosecution were so improper.
Ms White said that one police officer had groped her breasts and another, Senior Constable Wasko, had grabbed her neck as they walked behind her.
She turned around to take a photo of the officer who she believed had indecently assaulted her by grabbing her breasts.
However, Senior Constable Wasko grabbed and arrested her. Her phone was taken by another officer who appeared to delete the photo, magistrate Geoffrey Bradd found in the Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday.
The police case against Ms White relied entirely on Senior Constable Wasko's testimony and contained no footage from CCTV cameras in Martin Place nor police officers who were filming the rally.
When Ms White's legal team subpoenaed police for the footage, it showed Ms White being pushed and shoved in the back by Senior Constable Wasko as the protesters walked through Martin Place.
The footage showed Ms White taking a photo of an officer on her phone, proving that her evidence was deleted by police.
She is seen holding a water bottle in one hand, making the allegation of raising her elbow at Senior Constable Wasko "inconsistent", Mr Bradd found.
The alleged indecent assault was not captured on camera but Mr Bradd said "the evidence strongly indicates" it happened.
Medical records showed bruising on her breasts and neck pain.
When Ms White gave evidence during a hearing, a prosecutor repeatedly accused her of lying.
Her barrister, Phillip Boulten, SC, told the court on Tuesday that police had "escaped any form of investigation for perverting the course of justice".
"The only reason why [the photo] would be deleted would be to make it more difficult for the complainant to say something in court," he said.
Mr Bradd ruled that the investigation was "unreasonable and improper" and ordered the police to pay her $13,400 in legal costs.
Outside court, Ms White said she was just relieved it was over.
Her solicitor, Lydia Shelly, said police treated a protester as a criminal.
"The court confirmed today that my client is not a criminal. It has taken her nearly 12 months of litigation to prove that," she said.
"This decision sends a very clear message to the police. It is not a criminal offence to protest nor is it an offence to film police if you are not hindering their duties. The NSW public expect more from NSW Police."
Police have been contacted for comment.
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May 31, 2016 08:15
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May 1, 2016 03:27
