Myer boss says new retail award could lead to job cuts and price rises

Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes has slammed the Federal government’s new retail award, calling it “dumb” and saying Myer will reduce hours for some workers and raise its prices if the awards go ahead. Brookes also argued that weekends should be recognised as just “another day of the week” without necessarily requiring high overtime pay rates.

“They certainly are. I think the basis is that we have a situation that we’re able to negotiate with our employees to work Saturdays and Sundays. A lot of people like to work Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and have Thursday, Friday off. A lot of them like to do that and not expect to get paid overtime,” he said in an interview with Business Spectator.

“A lot of casuals are happy to take Sunday without getting overtime with the standard hours that we have. Let us negotiate a fair EBA [enterprise bargaining agreement] with our people with the protection of the union and we’ve got a very responsible union in the SDA [Shop, Distributive and Allied Employee’s Union], let us negotiate that. It’s good for everybody rather than have any government intervention.”

Brookes said that if the laws go through, Myer will be left with no alternative but to review its rosters.

“We’ll have to review the EBA that we’ve got and potentially the first thing that we’ll do is reduce the number of casual and permanent part-time hours and change our rosters, so therefore a lot of people that can’t work Saturday and Sunday because they’ve got kids or because they’ve got sporting events or they’ve got husbands that work, we’ll have to put pressure on them to extend their working week and change their working week.”

“So, I think what they’re missing is the potential fracture that’ll take place from a social culture point of view, where people just can’t spend the time that they want with their kids because they’re having to work hours because of the cost associated with part time and casual labour.”

Brookes also said that retail prices will rise as a result of the new awards, and that customers will not be receiving the same level of service as they are used to.

“So it’s going to have two effects to make us uncompetitive and it’s going to have an effect to make the social fabric also a concern from my point of view, so for both those reasons I think it’d be great if they did reconsider them.”

“One of the problems retailers have is we’re quite fractured in the way in which we approach government as three independent bodies, but I think it’ll be great going forward if we get the opportunity to put our message out that we need to have a responsible attitude to Saturday and Sunday, both trading hours and Saturday and Sunday rates of pay.”