From The Australian:
Labor will step up its push to protect penalty rates arguing the Fair Work Commission’s ruling to align Sunday rates with Saturday in some industries is untenable.
The opposition will formally tell parliament on Monday it wants to legislate to ensure last week’s decision is never implemented and penalty rates can’t be dropped in the future if it results in cuts to take-home pay.
The Fair Work Commission has decided Sunday penalty rates for retail, hospitality and fast food workers should be cut to bring them closer to Saturday pay levels.
More than 600,000 people are expected to be affected.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has written to the prime minister urging him to support Labor’s drafted legislation.
“Malcolm Turnbull is giving the big banks a tax cut and the person making his coffee a pay cut,” Mr Shorten told AAP.
“The prime minister can’t even summon up a bit of sympathy for these people. As far as he’s concerned, they are just numbers on a spreadsheet.”
MB is well aware that Australia needs to deflate its input costs if it is to survive the post-mining boom adjustment. However, that needs to be done in a context of mutual sacrifice. None of these sectors is tradable and, moreover, in a context of excess capacity and dramatic under-employment, this will do nothing to create more jobs.
Basically it is class warfare on the young people who dominate these sectors. They are already under attack in pretty much every budget repair reform, as well as having their basic needs assaulted by the housing bubble.
It’s some perverse form of economic child abuse.
