Major pay move for 2.6 million 'hardworking' Aussies: 'Keep their heads above water'

Yahoo

24-07-2025

The government is trying to protect the pay rights of roughly 2.6 million workers by introducing new legislation to parliament. The bill would safeguard penalty and overtime rates for those on certain award contracts.
The legislation is being introduced on Thursday, and Labor will be seeking support from both the Coalition and the Greens to get it approved. Employment and workplace relations minister Amanda Rishworth said this measure is essential for "hardworking" people.
'If you rely on the modern award safety net and work weekends, public holidays, early mornings or late nights, you deserve to have your wages protected,' she said.
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'Millions of hardworking Australians rely on penalty rates and overtime rates to keep their heads above water, which is why this bill is so critical."
Labor went to the election promising to protect penalty and overtime rates after a push from the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) to change how these pay benefits could work.
The ARA made an application to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) that included more than a dozen amendments.It argued the current General Retail Industry Award 2020 (GRIA) was unnecessarily convoluted because there are 994 individual pay rates that spanned nearly 100 pages.
So, it suggested award workers earning $53,670 and above could be exempted from benefits like overtime rates, evening and weekend penalty rates, and annual leave loading.
It also wanted to reduce rest times between shifts from 12 hours to 10 hours, and allow workers to waive their meal breaks to finish their shifts early.
In exchange, workers would be given an opt-in 25 per cent boost to their base rate.
But the application copped a spray from Labor at the time.
'Labor's longstanding position is that workers' wages should not go backwards," the then workplace relations minister Murray Watt said in a counter submission to the FWC.
'If you give up your nights and weekends to keep Australia fed and clothed, you deserve your penalty rates."
How would the legislation work and will it pass?
The government is now going one step further by bringing in strengthened legislation for award worker pay.
Under Labor's proposal, an award would not be allowed to be altered if it could be shown that just one worker would be worse off under an arrangement that involved a change in overtime or penalty rates.
However, the government could find it difficult to get this legislation passed.
The opposition said the FWC already has enough powers to look after all types of workers and ensure they have the best possible conditions.
'There is no threat to penalty rates,' shadow industrial relations and employment spokesman Tim Wilson said recently.
'What there is, is a political focus of the government that isn't focused towards improving the economic conditions to help small businesses grow, to enable them to go on and employ the next generation of workers, to give those first generation, those first jobs to young Australians so that they can be independent, and be able to get on with their economic futures.'