And while employers must follow annual wage increases for the minimum wage set by the government, this only applies to the base hourly rate in a company agreement. In the first case, company agreements drafted with an expiry date do not automatically expire and remain in progress unless terminated by the employee. Other demands that workers may miss out on in these zombie deals include laundry allowances, overtime rates, penalties, or uniform allowances. But Lindon later discovered that the original contract she signed used an outdated company agreement that allowed Subway to pay her under compensation rules in effect 13 years earlier. Many company agreements entered into during the WorkChoice era before the Fair Work Act in 2009 are still circulating because there is a loophole to use them beyond their expiry date. This means that workers` wages and working conditions remain in line with the agreement and do not improve as modern rewards change. Instead, her agreement, written in 2017, classified her as “part-time” despite her irregular working hours, allowing the company to pay her less. They are called “zombie deals” because they don`t die unless workers renegotiate them and it is estimated that they are currently affecting thousands of Australian workers. Fast food chain Subway is the latest retailer to be targeted by a union for so-called zombie company deals. Felicity Sowerbutts, director of the Young Workers Centre union in Melbourne, said Subway franchises are known to operate under outdated deals. Breakfast also requested a response from Attorney General Christian Porter: The government is concerned about the reduction in the number of new and renewed corporate agreements and will invite contributions in 2020 in response to a discussion paper on the subject. She added that many workers with zombie deals do not benefit from penalty interest and a number of claims such as overtime regulation or uniform compensation.
The Fair Work Ombudsman beat Subway with a hefty fine in September last year after finding that Australian franchisees owed dozens of employees $150,000 in unpaid wages, and Sowerbutts said many of the company`s deals would not pass the Global Better Off (BOOT) test, which assesses payment terms, if they were negotiated today. By filling out this form, you will not only improve your own salary at work, but also the salary of all employees in your workplace. “With some of these old WorkChoices agreements, because they were passed before 2009, it means that so many young workers don`t earn an hourly rate equal to the price. It`s quite outrageous,” she said. All company agreements are approved by the Fair Work Commission and can be legally enforced until a party requests termination of the agreement. Since the SDA was not involved in the preparation of these agreements, we cannot request to terminate them ourselves as we are not covered by the agreement. Under the current salary introduced in 2010, Ms. Lindon would have received $21.41 and weekend work penalty interest for her position as a 19-year-old casual employee.
Subway conducts proactive audits of franchisees` employment records and has strict internal workplace review requirements for franchisees. Failure to comply with the law will result in enforcement actions, including the possible termination of a franchise agreement. The significant savings a company makes in wages under these agreements mean that your boss probably won`t make a layoff request. This is possible because, under applicable labor law, the employer only has to ensure that the base rate of the expired agreement complies with the minimum prescribed by the Fast Food Industry Award (FFIA). It is estimated that tens of thousands of workers across the country – in a number of sectors – are employed under these zombie deals, which are allowed to exist due to a gap in the industrial relations system. A zombie contract can only be terminated by a request from one in three people to the Fair Work Commission: The SDA supports any subway worker who wishes to request the termination of a zombie agreement at their workplace. Caitlin Lindon, 20, from Melbourne, started working at Subway in 2018, but when she left in November last year, she was only making $17 an hour. Subway workers in hundreds of stores across the country are unconsciously trapped in outdated contracts written at the time of the Howard government`s work choices. .
