Essay On Sundays

The Fair Work Commission has reviewed penalty rates in many businesses such as hospitality, restaurants and retail industry awards. According to section 156 of the Fair Work Act 2009, there is a need to deal with this issue as a prospectus of a broader review of modern awards. As per The Australian Fair Work Commission, there is a reduction of 5 % in Sunday penalty rates in this year for workers, who are working in hospitality and this will increase to 10% in 2018 and 2018 as well. The same trend can be seen in the retail or pharmacy sectors and their worker will have to take home Sunday cut by 5% this year and until 2020, it will reduce by a further 15%.This imperative has advantages and disadvantages as well. Business giants have appreciated the decision and said that they can open their business on weekends and will be able to hire more employees. JB Hi-Fi and Myer will fall under the categories of those big retailers who will get benefits from these changes. On the other hands, retail workers will face the biggest hit. For example, employees working in the hospitality sector will face the reduction in the rates from 175% to 150%, however, casuals will get will same rates without any changes.

The fast-food workers are expressed as a pond in a bigger game. They have to deal with their low pay in order to ensure low prices by these franchises. Jencunas concerns go on to represent the beginning of a bigger chain effect. Briefly, he states that, “The average fast food store would go from profitable to unprofitable overnight. Some would close immediately, leaving their workers worse off than they were when working for $7.50 an hour, while others would raise prices and try and remain in business, hurting consumers” (“Don't Deserve Any More, or Less”). Evaluating his reasoning we see that if fast-food workers ask for a higher minimum wage, they will in return influence the profit margin and actually increase unemployment rate in this industry. The researchers go on to inform us that if their minimum wage increases the industry won’t be able to afford the change in their profit margin and result in bankruptcy. However, Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which supports the fast-food strike states a different claim:

The employment practices of the fast food chains also leave a lot to be desired. They are a great part of the reason that people need more than one job to survive. Because they have so many minimum wage jobs – even managers only make about $10 to $15 an hour. That had become a norm in the US, where people don 't even make a livable wage.

But what he isn’t advertising is the fact that it comes at a price. Other elements of the pay package are to be limited, including what constitutes unsociable hours. Day shifts on a Saturday will be paid at a standard rate, while extra premiums that are being offered for night and the rest of the weekend are lower than what is currently paid. In other words we are being cheated, and our long hours and possibly the busiest weekend shifts are being overlooked. On top of that, most of us are annoyed as our guaranteed pay increases related to time in the job are also going to be scrapped and replaced with a system linked to advancement through set training periods. It’s

The Progressive Era, lasting from 1890s to the 1920s, was a period when the United States went through a social and political reformation. This started because many Americans lived in poverty while there are only a handful of rich families. The upper class held monopolies which meant that they controlled every aspects of their products and workers. People who worked in factories and other industries faced terrible working conditions. Furthermore, the workers got little to none benefits from their jobs and had to work from dawn to dusk.

This week saw the Fair Work Commission (FWC) bring down an adjustment to Penalty rates in Australia for some Retail and Hospitality Workers. If you read the newspapers, listen to the radio, and watch TV coverage it comes across as the greatest betrayal of the working man (or woman) since the great Depression.

Employees are asked to work long hours and take on more duties, yet pay continues to decrease. Many employees opt to replace established employees with new workers, in an effort to save money, and this is only one way in which a person may be penalized for doing nothing wrong.

A fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage will affect over three hundred thousand workers and cost over two hundred twenty eight million dollars over the next five years(Deng 1). San Francisco raised the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour. That being said The Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institution, Adam Ozimek and Stephen Bronars of Edgewood Economics reported that since the increase many restaurants and hotels have laid off workers (Puzder 1). This comes as no surprise since in 2014 the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing the minimum wage to ten dollars and ten cents an hour would result in 500,000 job losses ( Puzder 1). As of right now 6.5 million Americans are working part time because they’re unable to find full-time jobs and opportunities ( Puzder 1). Raising minimum wage is only going to hurt those that are currently part time, unemployed and the upcoming generation of young adults just now about to enter the working

According to a study done by Perdue University, “…paying fast-food restaurant employees $15 an hour could lead to higher prices. Prices at those businesses could increase by an estimated 4.3%, according to the report” (Wihbey, Effects of raising the minimum wage: Research and critical lessons”). With a higher minimum wage, businesses must then pay their employees more, and to pay these additional expenses; they are coerced to charge more for their products, which impacts everybody, making it more difficult for people to provide for their families. The Cato Institute stated, “According to a review of more than 20 minimum wage studies observing price effects found that a 10 percent increase in the US minimum wage raises food prices by up to 4 percent” (Wilson, “Four Reasons Not to Raise the Minimum Wage”). If the federal minimum wage increases from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour, it is being increased by slightly more than 206%, which, according to this study, could lead to almost an 84% growth in food prices. According to another study on the effects of an increase in the federal minimum wage on consumer prices in the Reason magazine, “Raising the minimum wage to $15 could increase the cost of food by 43%” (47: 10). After a significant increase in the federal minimum wage, the employees who did not lose their jobs would then be receiving

Across the nation, hundreds of thousands of other hourly workers may also see smaller paychecks in the coming year because of this response to PPACA. The law exempts businesses with fewer than 50 full-time workers from this requirement to provide benefits. But big restaurant chains, retailers, and movie theaters are starting to trim employee hours. Even colleges are reducing courses for part-time professors to keep their hours down and avoid paying for their health premiums.

Have you ever thought if you were a worker and you think you should get paid more an hour? Well the fast food workers at Mcdonalds get paid (their minimum wage is $7.25 an hour). And some people think it should really be $15 an hour because they really do work hard like making sure everything is clean to have a space to work with, practice their skills to get their food ready fast and so they can enjoy, and lastly knowing how to welcome their customers. Like so, “A first wave of fast food strikes began in November 2012 in several New York city restaurants”. They are protesting to this cause because “That for many would boost their hourly pay to $15 from the current federal minimum $7.25”. (Article ½)

Accompanied by an already ridiculing tone, the author, Karen Matthews quickly asserts her main contention with the title ‘Penalty rates cut to hit workers hard, while rorting MPs have snout in trough’ in an article published on the 4th of March, 2017. Matthews also includes a political cartoon entailing hypocrisy and inequality between two figures who are affected by the issue at hand. Throughout the article, the writer argues that the reduction in penalty rates is harmful, and incorporates the cartoon to support the same contention in a simpler and more visual form.

The Fair Work Commission (FWC) in Australia along modern awards and employment contracts, has the power to control employee wages and conditions. Wages are the price paid to the labour force for its contributions in the production process. The FWC regulates if the National Employment Standards and enterprise agreements are met under the Fair Work Act (2009). Modern awards and employment contracts are arranged for the remaining individuals in order to determine their wages and conditions. Wages are also determined through the government implementation of price floors and also the supply and demand. Consequences are implemented by the FWC if Australia companies are found to have contravened the Fair Work Act (2009), one recent Australian company that was found to have infringed this legislation was Coles.

In the technical sense, penalty rates are a form of tangible benefit within the financial context which generally refers to those payments made to workers outside normal working hours. Regulator motivations for including penalty rates in modern awards as stated by (Sloane, 2014) are twofold: firstly, to compensate workers for work performed during what was historically known as ‘unsociable hours’ and secondly, to dissuade employers from operating within those hours. However, as advocated by (Sheldon & Thornthwaite, 2013) the modern award reviews have ‘provided a forum for employers and their associations to escalate their campaign to the significance of penalty rates in industries operating during the traditionally ‘unsociable hours’, which is evidence that employer associations prefer to enhance managerial prerogative over productivity which is predominantly concerned with the cost of resources. The push for the examination of provisions regarding penalty rates has mostly been seen to affect the tourism and retail industries.

The fast food workers are being exploited and underpaid. They work long hours with very little pay and are treated horribly. As a matter of fact, “the industry’s wages are so low that even those front line employees who work 40 hours per week are often forced to rely on public assistance, and only 13 percent have access