Meet The 26-Year-Old Shelf Stacker Who Took On Coles Over Penalty Rates And Won
If you earn penalty rates and want to keep them, you've got this guy to thank.
It hasn’t been a great few weeks for Coles. As you probably know, the supermarket giant has been under fire over the impact of its cheap milk on Australia’s struggling dairy farmers. This week, Coles suffered another blow, this time courtesy of the Fair Work Commission and a 26-year-old trolley worker from Brisbane.
Coles has been in a dispute with Duncan Hart, a part-time employee who took on the supermarket chain over a pay deal it struck with the Shop, Distributive, and Allied Employees Association retail union in 2013. Hart argued the deal left some of Coles’ 77,000 workers worse off. This week the commission agreed. According to Fairfax Media, employees may have lost a combined figure up to $70 million a year.
The agreement between Coles and the SDA (known as the “Shoppies” union), offered an increase in the standard pay rate but cut penalties for evenings, weekends and public holidays. Under the law, changes to workplace conditions must leave employees “better off overall” compared to the legal safety net.
Coles has now been told it has 10 days to rectify the situation. It could choose to compensate workers who lost out, while keeping the general pay increase. Or it could revert to an older pay deal, which would mean a pay cut for workers, according to Hart.
“This is a great victory, but we still don’t know what Coles is going to do,” Hart told Junkee.
Critics say the situation raises concerns about the practices of unions like the Shoppies, because the payment scandal was only brought to light thanks to research from Josh Cullinan, an organiser from another union working in his spare time. The landmark decision has also sparked questions about the system more broadly.
“What’s revealed by my case is that the Fair Work Commission has allowed agreements that negatively impact thousands of workers at Australia’s wealthiest companies in a supposedly legal way,” Hart says.
The court battle, which saw Hart, Cullinan, and pro-bono lawyer Siobhan Kelly face off against Coles’ army of lawyers, has already been likened to The Castle.
“It was funny to see how many lawyers there were,” Hart says. “I felt like it was about 15 lawyers, it was hard to tell exactly. They had this huge legal team.”
“I think the main impression I got was how remote the process of the law is from any working class person.”
“I understand there are experts that interpret the law. But the whole process was dominated by lawyers and legal arguments. There was no way I could have been involved in the process if I hadn’t had the support of Josh and Siobhan.”
Hart is no stranger to activism, having also fought the Shoppies union over its opposition to things like marriage equality. The Brisbane uni student has been an employee at Coles since 2014 and says he has no plans to stop working there. He’s been flooded with messages of support. “It’s been a bit overwhelming,” he says.
Regardless of Coles’ next move, this story doesn’t end here. The commission’s ruling could have implications for workers at McDonalds and Woolies, which also have also struck pay deals with the Shoppies.
“There’s still going to be the question of workers’ rights at Coles and every other retailer,” Hart says. “The question is, can retail workers organise to ensure they actually have a voice that stands up for them, rather than the SDA, which is clearly not doing that.”
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Luke Henriques-Gomes is a freelance journalist from Melbourne. He’s a former staff reporter at The Weekly Review, and writes mostly about sport, politics and pop culture. Contact him on Twitter at @lukehgomes.