Retail workers’ union unconvinced with government’s Easter trading proposals
The government’s plan to allow local authorities to determine whether shops and garden centres can open on Easter Sunday just shifts the problem to a different decision-maker, says FIRST Union Retail and Finance Secretary Maxine Gay.
“The Minister’s promise that the law will give workers the choice to accept or decline work without reason is hollow.”
“The same promise was made when Sunday trading was introduced, but it never came to anything,” says Gay.
“Power relations in a workplace make it impossible for a worker to refuse to work Easter Sunday. Has the Minister forgotten that, while he says workers may decline to work on Easter Sunday for no reason, those workers on a 90 day trial who refuse to work can be dismissed for no reason.”
“There’s no security in that,” says Gay.
Maxine Gay also questions whether the proposed Bill will be a conscience vote.
“In the past it has but it looks like this time the National Party may be trampling over its own members with a conscience,” Gay says.
“The proposed Bill does nothing to address the shambles that the Government says exists in current legislation. We could see some parts of the country, such as an area with a major tourist event, being denied Easter Sunday trading by a local authority and another where these is no reason such trading being granted it. Has the Government learned nothing from its botched Health and Safety laws?”
“FIRST Union has no problem with updating and modernising the current exemptions to Easter Trading, but the government has refused to engage with the union before promoting this Bill,” says Maxine Gay.
