The retail union has again been caught out undermining award conditions for thousands of its members. The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association’s flagship enterprise agreement with Coles recently drew criticism from the Fair Work Commission for falling short of award standards.

In a hearing to approve the agreement, the commission raised concerns that it may not be an overall improvement on the retail award that would otherwise apply. Fair Work sought a number of undertakings from the company before it would certify the agreement.

Coles has been forced to increase the loading paid to casual workers from 120 percent, as negotiated by the SDA, to 125 percent, as set in the award, a difference of $1.04 an hour for an adult casual worker. A 17-year-old casual will have an increase of 10 percent after the commission’s intervention. Coles has also had to increase the base pay rate for workers aged 17 and 18 to get the agreement through. 

This decision confirms that the SDA’s bargaining strategy – trading off conditions and penalty rates for a marginally higher base rate of pay – saves Coles millions compared to award rates.

This is a key point for SDA members to remember when confronting the same tired arguments put forward by SDA officials to justify their industrial passivity. It is hard to imagine a more embarrassing repudiation of the SDA’s “service unionism”, which sneers at the idea of organising and involving members in fighting for their own rights.

The Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union (AMIEU) has said that the commission’s decision is a “slap in the face” to the SDA, which was “dudding” workers in its agreement with the supermarket giant. The AMIEU represents a small section of Coles’ workforce and had campaigned for workers to vote against accepting the enterprise agreement.

While there is something to celebrate in the commission’s decision, much in the agreement is left untouched. According to Josh Cullinan, an NTEU official whose detailed analysis of the agreement sparked much of the public scrutiny of the deal, many thousands of Coles workers will still be worse off. Cullinan estimates that, while the increase to casual loading will cost Coles around $15 million, Coles will save anywhere from $30 million to $100 million every year by ripping off its adult permanent workforce – a majority of Coles workers.

This is because the SDA-backed agreement scraps many night-time and Saturday penalties, and substantially cuts Sunday penalties. Under this agreement, a permanent worker employed between 6pm and 9pm on a weekday earns $2.18 an hour less than under the award, the same lower rate for hours worked during the day on Saturday, and $5.60 an hour less than the award for hours worked during the day on a Sunday.

“Whilst we have had a substantial win for casual workers and young workers, we must continue to fight an even bigger wage theft taking place against ongoing adult staff”, Cullinan told Red Flag.