Union’s fight is the ‘height of hypocrisy’

THE union taking the independent Fair Work Commission to court to overturn its penalty rate decision has itself struck more than 30 deals to slash penalty rates.

United Voice, which has 120,000 hospitality workers, is challenging the independent umpire’s ruling to cut Sunday and weekend penalty rates in a case to be heard in the Federal Court in September.

Yet the union has been accused of hypocrisy for negotiating more than 30 agreements that have resulted in the lowering of Sunday penalty rates by up to $3100 a year for security staff at prisons and hospitality workers.

This includes dozens of high-profile hotels that have been paying lower penalty rates than family-owned hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, who hire staff under the award.

The United Voice also negotiated an agreement with Serco Immigration Services, which runs Christmas Island Detention Centre, to cut Sunday penalty rates for some staff from 75 per cent to zero, meaning Sunday wages were $8 less an hour than under the award, as of 2013.

Similar deals were struck at NSW’s Parklea Correctional Centre, Junee Correctional Centre and for security services at Long Bay Forensic Hospital where security officers were paid $10 per hour less on Sundays than under the award.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash (pictured) said the agreements demonstrated that unions have put their own interests ahead of the workers they claim to represent. “The union movement’s misleading and hypocritical campaign regarding penalty rates has fallen apart at the seams and has been exposed for what it is,” she said. United Voice and ACTU president Ged Kearney railed against penalty rate cuts outside Federal Court on Wednesday. “If left unchallenged, this decision would see some of the lowest paid workers in the country suffer a pay cut they can’t afford and don’t deserve,” United Voice Victorian secretary Jess Walsh said. “We are compelled to take this legal step. “We cannot accept a decision that impacts so dramatically on already lowpaid workers.”