Penalty Rate Cut Fails to Stimulate Jobs - Human Resource Management

Internal code: MAS6827

Human Resource Management:

Cutting penalty rates across the country have failed to create any extra jobs or give workers more hours, new research has found. In a blow to the Turnbull government backing of the Fair Work Commission decision to reduce penalty rates, a survey of 1351 workers by the University of Wollongong and Macquarie University found there has been no short-term increase in average weekly hours worked by employees. Fair Work justified its decision in March by arguing a gradual reduction in penalty rates would result in more trading hours, an expansion in the level of services offered and an increase in overall hours worked. But University of Wollongong lecturer Martin Brien will tell the Western Economic Association International conference in January that some workers actually experienced a drop in the number of penalty-rate hours they worked in the first two months after they were reduced. Brien concluded that up to 15 percent of all retail workers who were employed on Sundays worked 9 percent fewer hours between June and July, while hospitality workers experienced no change to their hours. The [retail] results confirm a statistically significant decrease in the proportion of our award employees working on Sundays between June and July he said. The report, which is the first piece of research published on the impact of the decision, is likely to be seized on by Labor as it frames penalty rates as one of its key policy differentials ahead of Saturday Bennelong byelection where the Turnbull government majority is at risk.