By Date
	By Subject

Call the HACSU Helpline
1300 88 00 32

more info

Call Centre Staff Face Pay Cuts & Lost Penalty Rates Under 'Non-Negotiable' AWAs

Eighty workers employed at Lufthansa's GTS Melbourne call centre face pay cuts, reduced penalty rates and a potentially discriminatory bonus scheme under 'non-negotiable' AWA individual contracts made under the Federal Government's new IR laws the Victorian Workplace Rights Advocate found today.

Workers who do not sign the 'non-negotiable' contract also face the removal of staff benefits cards.

While The Workplace Rights Advocate found the AWA individual contract may 'be found to be unfair' to workers, it also concluded that in most aspects it was probably legal under the Federal Government's new IR laws.

ACTU President Sharan Burrow said:

"These are ordinary Australian workers doing their jobs and trying to keep their heads above water in the face of rising petrol prices, interest rates and other costs."

"But because of the Government's new IR laws what these workers also being confronted with is cuts to their pay and penalty rates, discrimination if they take time off work to look after sick kids, and the threat that the AWA individual contract their boss has presented to them is non-negotiable and they will be discriminated against if they don't sign it."

"The Federal Government cannot hide from the facts of its IR laws."

"What we are seeing under these laws is ordinary working people being sacked with no opportunity to have their side of the story heard."

Workers like those at the Cowra abattoir are being legally dismissed and offered their jobs back at lower rates of pay and workers like these employees at Lufthansa's GTS call centre in Victoria are being pushed onto AWA individual contracts that cut their pay and reduce their penalty rates.

"This is the truth of these IR laws and what they are doing to Australian working families," said Ms Burrow.