I have heard of more newsagents being visited by Fair Work Australia representatives and guided to adjust employment arrangements for newspaper delivery drivers. The changes have led to annual cost increases of between $15,000 and $35,000. To add this level of cost to an already marginal operation will kill some businesses and hurt the working families the government says it is so concerned about.
Despite words by the federal government that there are mechanisms for dealing with some of the issues, I don’t see the government proactively working with newsagents on this. Instead, they are sending inspectors to visit newsagents and other businesses to enforce the regulations.
The silence from newsagents about the challenges around the employment changes is concerning. My blog post of March 15 on this topic has generated plenty of behind the scenes discussion but little public comment.
Newsagents are scared. I know that some in some newsagents associations are scared too. I have heard that some representing newsagents believe that this issue should not be discussed publicly. The trouble is, lack of discussion is leaving newsagents to break the law.
While newsagents need to ensure that they operate within the law, they also need to engage on a co-ordinated campaign to lobby the federal government on the personal and economic impact of the legislation of working families – a term they love to use. This legislation is leaving many working families worse off – newsagents and employees.
Newsagents can use their geographic footprint to lobby on this. But for that to happen they need a strong national plan and they need to work together.
Why arent Publishers taking a bigger interest in this Legislation, surely this will impact them when these businesses collapse when they cant absorb these costs, the heads in the sand approach will not succeed, history tells us that.
we should be targeting federal labor members and asking them why they dont want jobs in there state or territory, ask them if they like there paper being delivered to their electorate offices, or buying them at the corner shop.
If govt doesnt want to help then why do we vote for them, small business in general will have to deal with this legislation and this will mean less casual employment , less flexibility within small business and inevitabilly less small business.
This will mean less jobs, this what needs to be put to local reps so that they have to get of their collective butts and lobby for the changes that are needed.
thsi can be better done by everyone getting at their federal labor reps and making it known what the consequenses are going to be and getting them to lobby for changes, there is no point applying to the opposition ans they cannot affect change.
This needs to a targeted approach on a local level.
I am off to write my letter to our Reps, it may seem impotent but in the end you need to appeal to the their sensitivities, and that is what I will be doing.
For the record I am no longer an ANF member, got tired of the lack of action and increasing costs.
I know there was some heated discussion in the previous threads on this matter. But I am still left wondering. Can anyone on here point out where in the old legislation it said you could employ the staff on lesser time arrangements (smaller minimum shifts or no minimum) than the new fair work legislation?
Blake, that’s similar to some of my thoughts…and I might add they only apply to NSW.If NSW agents were totally complying with the old state based award then the new federal award contains nothing new.In fact, there is the possibility for some small savings, as the commencement of “normal hours” is now 5am instead of 6am, saving some overtime hours, and meal entitlements are now gone also.
I may get shot down for this comment, but……the proposed award was put up for submissions maybe 2 and a bit years ago.Did no one (associations, individual agents) take the time to read it, get advice on their situation and make a submission if adversly affected?
why and Blake…
While it’s fair to ask what we did in the past and the basis for this, the reality is that the economics have changed (meybe because of greater enforcement) and this is impacting newsagents.
“maybe because of greater enforcement”…..interesting comment Mark.Do you mean people have been ignorant of the law or have simply flouted it and relied on the fairly large chance of not getting caught out? There’s no excuse for either of these options.
this may make interesting viewing:
http://www.airc.gov.au/awardmod/fullbench/industries/awardmodindustry.cfm?award=retail
There’s a heap of submissions there on the then proposed award.What industry group stands out by its absence? The only submission from the newsagency industry is from the QNF and sadly I’m having trouble opening it so I don’t know what it says.
My guess is that the the staff drafting the legislation took this silence to mean the newsagency industry had no major objections to the changes. I suspect that NSW awards were deemed to represent the entire newsagency industry, and we have the situation we do today.
So which association is organised enough to put in a variation application to make the situation more equitable for ALL newsagents? A middle ground needs to be found.
why…
My comment about greater enforcement is speculation on my part. I actually don;t have a firm answer for your question.
I blogged on June 9 2009 with a link to the QNF submission.
http://www.newsagencyblog.com.au/2009/06/11/newsagent-case-on-award-modernisation.html
Here in Victoria we were roped into an onerous award years ago.
@ Mark
I’m trying not to step on toes this time. And honestly I would love for newsagents to be able to pay “short-shifts” if it was mutually beneficial for the deliverers or just for them to employ casual students an hour or two. But I won’t back down from my stand that there are employers out there that would “force” poor working conditions on their employees through blackmail of loss of shifts if the legislation allowed it.
Heck you still hear about cases where employers have taken “short tills” out of employee pays. Its an unfortunate case of bad apples spoiling the whole barrel.
@ Why
Its not just Newsagents that have noticed increased “enforcement” from fair work. I know people in the Restaurant industry who are finding themselves visited by fair work in the same manner.
Their lawyer was quick to point out under their previous award about 80% of the provisions they found employers weren’t complying with were in the old award too.
The only difference is until now, they hadn’t got caught doing the wrong thing.
I’m trying to view the PDF submission now but after waiting ages, I’m trying again only to find its 15 meg. No wonder it wouldn’t open in the browser.
I’m having trouble opening the QNF submission,possibly due to my dodgy wireless broadband.Can anyone tell me the gist of what they had to say?
In the meantime Mark, I just found this:
http://www.airc.gov.au/awardmod/fullbench/industries/awardmodlist.cfm?award=retail
It’s a list of all the awards that were considered for, and consolidated into, the new retail award.Certainly the old NSW award/NAPSA is there, but I don’t know the names of awards that applied to newsagents prior to Jan 1.Anyone care to have a look and comment?
Cheers
Blake there are employers who will try and rip off employees unfortunately. They give us a bad name.
A slight edit to my previous post:
“i don’t know the names of awards that applied to newsagents OUTSIDE NSW prior to Jan 1”
Thanks for that Blake, at least i know it’s not my dodgy connection!
So I’ve had a read through it. And based on the QNF submission it confirms a few things.
Qld never had penalty rates on saturday for newsagents for the last 10 years. Qlds penalty rate on sunday was only 1,1/4 time.
Drivers were non-award classified before. So pretty much subject to minimum wage laws and thats about it.
But according to the submission – NSW & VIC already had the higher penalty rates. So while its terrible for QLD shops – it shouldn’t be so bad for NSW & VIC.
It actually looks like QNF did quite a nice job on their submission – Apart from when using “black boxes” to hide information you can just copy/paste the text to word….
One interesting thing is QNF was asking for a 7 year transitional arrangement to allow newagents to seek new supply contracts – Mark do you know if the new awards allow for any transitional period?
Looking through it more – the numbers are stuffed anyway. Given Terrace News, State Award p14 of the PDF says that their D employee works 15 hours a week including 3 on saturday and 3 on sunday.
Based on the “new” modern award saturday is 1/2 penalty and sunday is double. Correctly they say 19.5 hours. However if the employee was working sunday before penalty is 1/4 therefore old hours were 15.75 not 15. Not huge – but clearly wrong. As an accountant i’m not impressed. I can imagine anyone reading the submission wouldn’t have been either.
There are other changes with the new award which impacts Vic and NSW. It think more to do with minimum hours as well as compensation for use of own vehicle. But I am no expert as I am not a distribution newsagent any more.
My understanding is that there are transitional arrangements. See here:
http://www.fairwork.gov.au/Pay-leave-and-conditions/Awards/Pages/Modern-awards-transitional-arrangements.aspx
There will always be employers who try to rip of employees regardless of what so called protection mechanisms are in place. Equally there will always be employees trying to rip off employers regardless of what efforts we go to to prevent that. There is always someone, somewhere, trying to rip someone else off – an unfortunate fact of modern life.
Why cater to the lowest common denominator because of these relatively isolated incidents? This just cripples the ability to be flexible and no one wins.