Long-term Sunday trading may hinge on penal rates

Press, 6 December 1989, Page 3

Long-term Sunday trading may hinge on penal rates

By

RICHARD CRESSWELL

Widespread post-Christmas Sunday trading could hinge on penal payments. Many employers fear penal pay will make it uneconomic to open year-round on Sunday’s. Unions want penal rates’to stay but expect renewed employer efforts to abolish them. Christchurch supermarkets yesterday ' took a low-key response to legislation liberalising trading hours.

The general manager of Countdown South Island, Mr Mike Prendergast, ■ said Countdown would not open on Sundays unless its competitors did. Penal pay rates would make it expensive, he said. “We are not in favour of Sunday trading. There are already flexible trading hours, and our staff would not want to work seven days a week.”

If Countdown did decide to open on Sundays it would have to employ more; staff, and the

changes would increase costs for the competitive foodstuffs industry, Mr Prendergast said. The secretary of the Southern Distribution Workers’ Union, Mr Paul Piesse, said Sunday shopping would not mean more jobs, as employers would attempt to casualise the industry. Workers should have a choice about working on Sundays, he said.

“But we want regular full-time work maintained as much as possible, rather than the use of casual work.”

Many retail workers were young, female and under pressure to work difficult hours, he said.

The manager for Farmers in the South Island, Mr Ralph Samuels, said FTC’s Christchurch stores had already won dispensation for Sunday trade before Christmas.

“The right to be able to open is a good idea. The market will rule,” he said. The company paid double time for Sunday work but he questioned whether Sunday trading would be sustainable for a whole year.

“But if the penal rates were removed it would be a whole different bailgame.” The general manager for J. Rattray and Son, Mr Bob Stewart, said the company was undecided about opening its own grocery stores on Sundays. The company had Price Cutters stores and also supplied independently owned and run Price Cutter and Al stores.

Many independent stores were already open seven days, he said. The National Association of Retail Grocers and Supermarkets has again come out against Sunday trading. Its director, Mr David Hayward, said many of the association’s 1130 members had smaller

stores opening seven days to gain an adequate level of sales. Increased Sunday trading by large supermarkets posed a threat to.their future.

The association recognised that members who were owner-opera-tors of large supermarket stores might be compelled to open seven days. Mr Hayward said that to suggest tourists would be attracted to spending millions of dollars on Sundays was “naive and facile.” Many tourist shops already opened on Sunday.

The changes have pleased Department of Labour inspectors. “The department had been inundated with requests for preChristmas Sunday trading, and work had jumped dramatically in the past four months,” said an inspector, Mr Peter Winchester. These would not require processing now. Mr Winchester said the changes allowed 24 hour trading as well as on Sundays.