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INDUSTRY INSIGHT A CHANCE TO MAKE THE AWARDS SYSTEM WORK There’s nothing like a recession, let alone a pandemic, to prompt action on business issues, especially industrial relations, and the NRA relishes its role in discussing retailer-specific changes to the bureaucratic nightmare that is the modern awards system. By National Retail Association CEO Dominique Lamb. The entire Australian economy has been hit hard by the COVID-19 tsunami. The first worldwide pandemic in 100 years has forced governments across the globe to enact harsh but necessary lockdown measures and plunged Australia into its first recession since 1991. Although, at the time of writing, Australia has avoided the high death tolls seen in other countries, the impact on the economy stands to be long lasting. Following the panic-buying spree in March, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), retail sales entered a sharp downward spiral in April with a decrease in turnover of 17.7 per cent. The ABS then revealed in June that unemployment had exploded to 7.1 per cent nationwide, with most economists noting that the real figure is much higher when you factor in those who have stopped looking for work or are underemployed. The National Cabinet has implemented a range of stimulus measures aimed at cushioning the economic blow, but that hasn’t been enough to prevent Treasurer Josh Frydenberg confirming that Australia is in its first recession since 1991. If we’re to accelerate a retail road to recovery, we need a policy landscape conducive to saving as many businesses as possible and thereby keeping workers in jobs. A key policy area to focus on, therefore, is the field of industrial relations, with specific regard to simplifying the modern awards system. The federal government recently announced five industrial relations working groups, comprising industry associations, business groups and unions. The objective is to build consensus on how to achieve a structure that helps the Australian economy rebound in the strongest manner possible. The NRA is pleased to have been selected as a primary member of the government’s Award Simplification Working Group. Our extensive work in this area means we bring crucial inside knowledge of the workings of the retail sector on this issue. The high number of prominent payroll failures in the sector in recent years demonstrates just how complex and difficult to navigate the Retail Award and other awards have become. While no worker should ever be underpaid and retailers need to go the extra length in ensuring they’re complying with their obligations, there’s no denying that the complexity of the system is a major issue. It should also be noted that in the vast majority of underpayment cases it is the business itself that identifies the discrepancy and then self-reports to the Fair Work Commission. And these wage scandals have not been confined to retail; organisations such as the ABC and social justice law firm Maurice Blackburn have also had to back-pay workers for underpayment. To underline the degree of complexity, since 2013 employers in the retail industry have had to contend with close to 14,000 different rates of pay, depending on their employee’s status (permanent or casual), their age, their classification and the times at which the work is performed. This number easily doubles if you take into account shift workers, baking production employees, apprentices and those working under the supported wage system. The entire regime has been simply too confusing, even for large retailers with well-resourced expert HR divisions. What chance do small business owners have of understanding and complying with their responsibilities, even with the best of intentions? For example, under the Retail Award the basic task of rostering staff has some of the most counterintuitive and impractical rules in the award system. Although these may be practical for a single employee, once you start applying them to a group of employees across a seven-day operation, they quickly become grossly inefficient. The most common complaint we receive from members is that RDOs have to be rostered consecutively, which is fine for one cohort, but to cover the RDOs of one group, you have to ‘double up’ at least a few days a week, which adds to your labour costs if you keep your staffing levels static. The obvious solution to keeping labour costs low is employing fewer staff. If these inflexibilities could be removed, we believe we would likely see more jobs in the retail sector. Also, the inflexibility of part-time employment poses a significant problem for retailers, as while full-time and casual rosters can be set by notice, part-time rosters need to be set by a contractual arrangement. The sheer paperwork involved in changing part-time rosters is a bureaucratic nightmare, and not doing it requires the payment of overtime, so many retailers simply avoid it altogether. It’s critical that we look to the modern awards objective for common sense outcomes that support economic recovery and future employment growth. A simplified system that also provides greater flexibility will give small businesses the much-needed scope required to navigate the system, stay profitable and keep many Australians in jobs. The NRA greatly looks forward to working with the government and other stakeholders on the working group panel to achieve a desirable outcome. The National Retail Association The National Retail Association (NRA) is Australia’s largest and most diverse industry association. The NRA is the only retail industry association to deliver practical legal advice through its wholly owned and incorporated legal practice, NRA Legal. 10 CONVENIENCE WORLD JUL/AUG, 2020