Shop union plugs week-end loophole

Press, 28 August 1980, Page 4

Shop union plugs week-end loophole

I Parliamentary reporter The Shop Employees’ Association will lodge plaims in all affiliated awards banning the employment of workers on Saturdays.

<lt has already lodged claims under three awards covering gg 1 per cent of all employees fir retail businesses. A spokesman for the association, Mr G. D. Kelly, said yesterday that the claim would not be negotiable. “There will be no settlement of awards unless the claim is agreed to,” he said. The association yesterday made submissions to the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill.

Mr Kelly said after the hearing that the claims had been lodged on awards due to expire in the next two months. These were the retail (non food) award, the grocery and supermarket employees’ award, and the retail butchers’ award.

Claims would be lodged on the remaining five when they were due to expire. Mr Kelly said the Bill retained a clause in the present Shop Trading Hours Act, 1977 allowing an employee to refuse to work in any shop contrary to the provisions of any award or agreement applying to him. ’ The association used that “banning clause” when shop trading hours were extended

in 1977 to 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every week-day, by writing into all awards a clause banning employees from working any more than one late night a week.

Mr Kelly said that one of the reasons for the association’s opposition to Saturday trading was that retailers were not yet taking maximum advantage of optimum trading hours available under awards. These allowed trading between the hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. every week day. The Shop Employees’ Association submitted to the select commitee that alolwing retailers to remain open on Saturday was comparable with legalising drug trafficking because there was a demand for the service, the Press Association reports. The association’s industrial officer (Mr R. Campbell) urged that the legislation be withdrawn. The association presented an alternative bill in which it proposed to tighten the law relating to trading rather than extend the hours.

The Federation of Labour, representing more than 440,000 workers, of whom 30,000 are directly employed in the retailing industry, told

the committee that it was im. placably opposed to the Government’s plan to extend shopping hours. “This bill rides rough-shod over existing trade union principles and practices, and completely disregards the rights of workers to decent standards and conditions of living and work," said the F.O.L.

“The bill attacks rights of workers with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer,” it said. “The Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill would be more aptly entitled the ’Abolition of the Week-end Bill,’ for such is not only its inevitable effect, but also its manifest purpose and design.” A submission from the Combined State Unions also opposed the proposed legislation.

“There are strong social grounds for opposing an extension of the shopping week,” they said.

The select committee began hearing submissions on Tuesday, About 130 written and oral submissions are expected to be made on the bill over the next three weeks.

Tuesday’s submissions, Page 8.