Newsagents fight minimum hours law

Employers said yesterday Victorian newsagents were the "latest casualty" of federal Labor's awards overhaul, forcing them to engage employees for three hours a morning when they were often needed for only one or two hours.

The Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that under the Work Choices laws, newsagents could engage part-time staff on individual statutory agreements for as little as an hour a day.

The chamber's manager of workplace relations policy, Alexandra Marriott, said minimum and maximum hours for part-time workers could be varied by the use of an Australian Workplace Agreement.

The use of AWAs was scrapped by the Rudd government. Under the new retail award, the minimum shift for newsagent employees in Victoria has increased from two to three hours, in line with the rest of the country.

"Newsagencies are often low-margin businesses and their cost structures are being blown to pieces by this absurd rule," Ms Marriott said. "In terms of businesses such as grocery and hardware stores, unions and the Labor government have forced employers to dismiss young and vulnerable workers," she said.

"In this case, it is a hammer blow to small businesses increasingly forced to compete with supermarkets, petrol chains and stationery superstores.

"It also has the potential to toss out of work retired and semi-retired folk who like to work a couple of hours a day."

But federal Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard said: "The Australian people said very clearly what they thought of Work Choices at the last election.

"They said they didn't like condition-stripping AWAs that meant workers could be ripped off without compensation, and if they complained the boss could sack them with no notice and no recourse."

But Tony Abbott did not accept this, she said.

"Mr Abbott didn't get the message. He's been telling business lunches that if elected he'll bring back these contracts, which cut wages and conditions and put real pressure on family budgets."

Employers have applied to Fair Work Australia to vary the minimum three-hour shift provisions of the retail award.

Opposition workplace relations spokesman Eric Abetz said "one size does not fit all" in minimum hours, and he supported the capacity of employers and workers to have more flexibility.

Monday 24 May, 2010
The Australian