COSBOA joins chorus calling for Fair Work reforms for retailers

The Council of Small Business of Australia has joined the chorus calling for a review of the Fair Work Act, arguing Labor’s industrial relations setting are not friendly to small retailers and are costing jobs.

Peter Strong, executive director of COSBOA, says many small retailers are confused about pay rates under the Fair Work Act and claims some cannot get definitive information from the Fair Work Ombudsman.

“We’re penalised for not paying the right pay even though they don’t know what the right rate is,” Strong tells SmartCompany.

He says a review is necessary now, rather than next year as planned, because the Fair Work Act is costing jobs.

“Penalty rates on Sundays and public holidays are hurting university students, school students, mums and dads. Businesses don’t pay them because they can’t afford them,” Strong says, pointing out that the double time on Sundays and 2.5 times on public holidays were introduced in some states under the Act.

Strong also drew attention to uncertainty over whether schoolchildren can work fewer than three hours on schooldays. The ruling in favour of 90-minute shifts, dubbed a “win/win” for employers and employees by Strong, is being appealed.

“A review [of Fair Work] should be happening now, given the changes in retail, to help give people a better understanding of what they’ve got to put up with.”

Strong’s comments come after the Productivity Commission identified “constraints on workplace flexibility such as obstacles to the greater use of enterprise bargaining and the adoption of best practice productivity measures” as a “major restriction which require improvements” in its review of the retail sector.

The long-awaited review, released in draft form last week, said the Government should examine retail industry concerns about the two-year-old Act, including “consideration of options to address any significant obstacles to the efficient negotiation of enterprise-based arrangements that have the potential to improve overall productivity.”

It also said the Fair Work Ombudsman should “address the difficulties experienced by employers in calculating applicable award wage rates through better promotion of its existing services and where necessary by making refinement to existing systems.”

The Australian Retailers Association has also called for a review to be brought forward, but a spokesman for Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans told the Australian Financial Review the report did not make any findings that the Act was not working well.

The Australian Industry Group has previously called for a review of the Act, saying there was an “increasingly strong view that amendments are vital if we are to avoid economic risk down the track.”

AIG chief executive Heather Ridout has said that while large-scale reform is not needed, the transfer of business and general protections laws and some aspects of bargaining laws warrants another look.

Ridout called on the political parties to work together to ensure a “productive, flexible and fair workplace relations system is maintained in Australia and that the problems in the Fair Work Act are addressed, rather than continuing to adopt the view that further workplace relations reform is too hard or too risky.”

The Opposition workplace relations spokesperson Eric Abetz, who weeks ago raised alarm over the numbers of employers paying “go away” money in unfair dismissal cases and the cost of fighting such cases, says a review should happen now.

The Coalition has promised a “strong and effective” industrial relations policy before the next election, but has yet to define what that will be.

But some IR experts are not convinced that more changes to the system are the answer. Mark Dunphy, partner and head of Hall & Wilcox’s employment practice, has previously told SmartCompany that any changes need to be specifically targeted at deficiencies rather than change for change’s sake.