“I encourage all of you to vote `yes` for better pay, better leave and a fairer deal for everyone. The SDA is very experienced in negotiating enterprise agreements and has travelled for more than 20 years with major retailers, fast food operators, product and distribution chains as well as manufacturers. Among the agreements negotiated by the SDA that are currently in force are enterprise-level enterprise agreements that set minimum working conditions for a particular group of workers and an employer or employer. Speciality Fashion Group`s newly acquired brands, including Millers, Katies, Crossroads, Autograph and Rivers, have been paying for five years in 785 stores below the retail price by a former EA. The National Retail Association recently made possible its first meeting of the Enterprise Agreement Stakeholder Group (EASP). The EASP is a forum for members to facilitate discussions and learn more about business bargaining and attract industry to ongoing government negotiations in the retail sector. The panel was formed to inform the NRA`s positions in our engagement and as a retail sector representative in the Fair Labour Commission (FWC) Enterprise Agreement User Group. Mr. Heffernan asked workers to review their employment contracts to ensure that they are not paid under their current premium. The first meeting focused on the current political context, as well as the recent legislative amendments to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), which give the FWK more discretion regarding the absence, in certain circumstances, of minor procedural or technical failures in applications for enterprise agreements. The NRA was proud that the Masson Vice-President presented the FWC to the panel and exchanged information on some of the common issues associated with enterprise agreement authorizations in the retail sector. Pizza Hut had also terminated its recently expired contract. As reported in February, the past 12 months have seen a strengthening of media control and union activism with regard to collective agreements, with unions and the media calling for the denunciation of these agreements because they are perceived as “unfair”.

Following a failure of negotiations in September, the SDA put pressure on its redundancy action and the parties agreed to terminate the agreement until the first payment of wages in March. In Spotless, Colvin J.A. of the Federal Court of Justice found that Spotless Services Australia had also wrongly applied the “normal and usual turnover” exception. The case concerned the dismissal of three employees at Perth International Airport after Spotless lost its service contract with the airport. “Thousands of workers, particularly in the hotel and restaurant and retail sectors, are still believed to be paid under these dubious outdated employment contracts,” he said. On March 20, 2017, the SDA filed an application to terminate Specialty Fashion Group`s 2011 enterprise agreement, which expired in 2014. The contract was officially terminated on March 4, 2019. In recent months, we have seen an increase in activity in the end of the old zombie agreements.

In an email to the Commission and SFG, Ms. Dimopoulos said that few employees were aware of the agreement`s price rates. In January 2019, the FWC announced the 2007 Merivale Collective Agreement (which expired in nominal terms in December 2012), an agreement that included nearly 3,000 workers. The order to terminate the old contract comes a week after the Commission terminated a similarly outdated agreement that allowed the pub and restaurant empire The Merivale Group to pay its employees well below the bonus wage.