When Woolworths Group demerged Endeavour Group, it tried to exit alcohol sales and pokies through offloading its ALH hotels, Dan Murphy’s and BWS bottle shop outlets. Dan Murphy’s and BWS are up for new agreements but even before bargaining commenced it became clear that BWS was facing massive cuts to hours and changes to rosters. With fewer workers in store and the work only increasing, it’s a simple recipe for unsafe workplaces. For many years, BWS and Dan Murphy’s have relied on a legal fiction that some stores in some JAYCAR WORKERS BARGAINING FOR FIRST DEAL ENDEAVOUR GROUP SPINS OFF FROM WOOLWORTHS & SETS SITES ON CUTTING CONDITIONS EVEN FURTHER COLES LIQUOR WORKERS STILL ON WAGES-STEALING ZOMBIE SDA DEAL Liquorland, First Choice Liquor and Vintage Cellars workers remain on a ten year old zombie deal which continues to strip penalty rates, casual loading and other conditions. This deal from a bygone era, before RAFFWU was launched, is one of the remaining remnants of the notorious zombie deals the SDA did with bosses in exchange for employers recruiting workers to SDA. The infamous deals have cost millions of workers, billions of dollars. Now, Coles Group are negotiating for a replacement agreement and Coles Liquor workers can appoint RAFFWU as their bargaining representative. To find out more and get involved, contact RAFFWU. states are not ordinary retail outlets. While a BWS outlet which is the drive through bottleshop of a hotel might be considered the hotel’s takeaway department, it’s nonsense to suggest a retail shop in a shopping centre is anything but an ordinary retail shop. This legal fiction has been used to argue some BWS and Dan Murphy’s outlets are not covered by the General Retail Industry Award 2020 and extant enterprise agreements. Our approach in bargaining has been to call out this nonsense and press the claims of members in new agreements to cover all workers. RAFFWU members have been bargaining for a first enterprise agreement at Jaycar and RTM stores across Australia. Jaycar commenced bargaining meetings in September but bargaining is slow. This will be the first enterprise agreement applying to these stores. We know that our outcomes in bargaining are directly proportionate to the preparedness of members to take responsible protected industrial action. We support members engaging in the bargaining process – and help build their skills in negotiating better terms and conditions. We know SDA will agree to worse conditions as long as they get rights to pressure new workers to join their ‘club’. Every agreement which is made without RAFFWU involvement where the SDA is involved is worse than any agreement where RAFFWU is involved. However, good agreements have only come where RAFFWU members are engaged in industrial action. This applies to places like Bunnings and IKEA where members weren’t ready to take action in 2023. For us to win the conditions workers deserve, that needs to change in the future. That isn’t something we do in 4 years time. Building union power among workers needs to start much earlier. At Jaycar, we are doing that now and RAFFWU workplace leaders know that the deal they deserve will require members being not only active but organising for action in the workplace. 18
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