MORRISON’S AUSTRALIA DAY PAY CUT FOR WORKERS

The workers we rely on to plan, run and secure our Australia Day celebrations could lose hundreds of dollars form their pay packets under Scott Morrison’s nasty industrial relations changes.
Mr Morrison wants this Australia Day to be the last that workers are guaranteed public holiday penalty rates.
If Mr Morrison successfully scraps the Better Off Overall Test a typical employee on the Local Government Industry Award could be hit with a $273 Australia Day pay cut, according to the government’s own fair pay calculator. Instead of earning $455 over an 8-hour day they would earn just $182.
A level 4 club employee could earn $272 less next Australia Day than they do this Australia Day. A more senior level 9 club employee could lose $321. And a level 3 security officer could lose $280 over a standard 8-hour shift.
Australia Day is also a huge day for many hospitality workers, particularly in bars and pubs. They could also lose hundreds of dollars under Mr Morrison’s scheme.
These workers, like all workers, deserve extra compensation for working on a public holiday.
This pay cut is Scott Morrison’s thanks to the people who got us through the pandemic – the frontline and essential workers who put themselves at risk by showing up to work and steering Australia through the crisis.
If you abolish something called the Better Off Overall Test, guess what will happen:  workers will be worse off.
Scott Morrison’s earlier penalty rate cuts for retail, fast food, pharmacy and hospitality workers failed to deliver a single extra job. But now they want us to believe that cutting more penalty rates, cutting overtime, cutting shift loading, cutting allowances will create jobs?
Pay cuts are bad for workers and bad for the economy. For Australia to recover from the recession we need people with the money and confidence to spend.
The Government says the economy is doing well enough that businesses no longer need JobKeeper. But then they say the economy is doing so badly they need to cut the pay of workers. They can’t have it both ways.