Public Holiday Penalty Rates

I dont know how I feel about penalty rates

one side of me says, its a public holiday so they should get paid more,
but one side of me says why should they?

whilst its not as if hospitliaty venues can increase their prices by 100% just for this day, so why should the owners have to suffer,
but it might be the nature of the industry

 

I believe that penalty rates have their place, but I think that 2.5x is ********.
Hard to say exactly what's "fair", but I think that overtime should only be paid once you've done more than 40 hrs/week.

If you're doing shift or call-out work, then the hourly rates should reflect that. You either accept the rates on offer or not. Same for public hols.

 

It doesn't 'cost' you any more to work the extra hours and is factored into a package. The less 'free' hours you give away the better but there's some give and take.

Where the work is casual eg at call, the rates are reflective of the relationship - if I had to work without notice then of course there'd be adequate compensation to be paid.

I fail to see why we stick with such an antagonistic and antiquated employment regime in a 24/7 economy. Working M-F between 08:00 - 18:00 is no different (imho) to 35-40 hours on any other days of the week in the same hour range where work is planned and required to be undertaken all week round eg retail/service/tourism etc.

Where work is unplanned or outside of reasonable hours then penalties would be incurred eg. Shifts to undertake preventative maintenance in fields where a shutdown is planned well in advance like refineries, manufacturing process lines etc where holidays are scheduled for the affected workers. Healthcare is shiftwork and should have a permanent loading applied rather than having set working hours for critical staff who are then paid OT for longer hours.

The larger supermarkets drove up the ordinary time rates for their staff but traded off penalty rates and the rates paid to casuals. The casual rates should be reflective of 'how casual' the employment 8 hours each shift for every weekend is not casual it's part time but hard to enforce.

Also not lost on me is the point of casual work or weekends actually suit some people - why should they be more highly rewarded than a co-worker who prefers M-F or set hours for the same task?

 

Nice detailed post Scott.
Weekend work often doesn't "suit" people, but its the only time they can work, aka uni students.
In todays "casualized" workforce it is harder to get enough work to get by, i spent many years being drip feed as a causual/labour hire and relied on the odd weekend job to catch up on bills.
I had a regular casual gig for a while, the permo's sold out my casual loading for a higher hourly rate at my detriment
So they got more money 7am -3pm and never worked OT whilst us casuals got rorted on the weekends

Where did this 24/7 shopping attitude come from anyway ?
Oh, lets open more hours to make more $$$sss
If i need milk i make time to buy milk, i don't go back to the shops later to buy more just because its still open

It has become consumerism, if a shop owner wants to open late/weekends then pay penalty rates, if its not worth it then DONT OPEN (simple)

Brink back the old days, remember when people shopped ONCE A WEEK and were organized

 

Don't blame the retailer - 24/7 or longer hours make their numbers much more difficult to achieve profitability, they'd rather open Monday, Wednesday & Friday between 9 &12 so the cash registers have queues constantly and are more fully utilised, then spend the rest of the time at golf courses etc.

The blame lies with government & greedy landlords.

The government regulates trading hours, if they deregulate when shops may trade this impacts the staffing requirements of the retailer.

When hours were deregulated in some states (not all), major shopping centre leases were adjusted (at renewal) to reflect the greater costs (operational, staff, security, wear & tear, lighting, carparking facilities etc). This led to a decent increase in asset values for greedy LL as they're no longer basing utility of their assets on 44 hours/week trading.

 

There is a cost to working excessive amounts of unpaid hours - the cost to work life balance, health and family relationships.

Not to mention the opportunity cost..

 

Paper bags? Which era are you thinking of?

You are forgetting late night Friday shopping.

 

I am all for penalty rates,don't have a problem paying extra,also all for protection tariffs. Zero tariffs = Zero jobs as we have now.

 

I'm pretty sure Government healthcare facilities (Hospitals etc) are set up this way.
They get a permanent loading due to having a rotating roster, and get additional loading when working crappier times like nightshift.
And public holidays are only a +50% loading in addition.

In general, I reckon a +50% loading is good enough for public holiday workers.
I would LOVE +150% though.. my lil bro gets it working at ALDI. He got paid more than me the other day (hes 19!)..

 

@mikey7 - same as our butcher. The sales assistant (unqualified cashier/cash & wrap) gets paid more than a fully qualified butcher on the same public holiday.